Friday 26 July 2013

Fruit

Here begins the trip into unpublished posts of mine. 

Fruit! One of the staples of my diet as a vegetarian and as a human. I love fruit so much. I eat tons of different types in my house in Amerika and have found more here. I don't know if everyone knows the fruit I know even the kinds I eat regularly in California so I'll just write any that seem the slightest bit uncommon.

Durian - I've already given you a description of the taste from the little trip I took with my friends to go try it. Sweet, strong smelling and very slimy. Durian flavor is also popular for other treats like ice cream



Rambutan - I love these little red fruits. Rambut means hair in B. Indonesia and they really are covered in their own type of hair. They are usually covered in ants so you might want to bounce them on the floor a bit before pulling them open. They're sweet with a largish seed in the middle you spit out. I could spend whole afternoons eating them with my family here.


Manga - Ok everyone knows about mangoes but here they have different types. These are red and incredibly sweet. My host mama buys and sells them in large quantities which is great for me.



Kelapa aka Coconut - Again everyone knows these but here people get them fresh to drink. I'm not too fond of coconut water - the consistany of it always gets to me. After drinking one you can use a spoon to eat out the sides. They also use lots of coconuts in food too. There is nasi uduk which is rice made with coconut water water. There are drinks where the meat of the coconut floats with other fruit in a sweetened juice.

Salak - It's brown and scaly like a snake. Easily peelable. The kind from Yogya I like - the Bali kind I don't.


Jicama or Bangkowan (B. Indo)- Ok it's actually a vegetable I guess. I just looked it up right now. But its put with all the other fruits so it can be added to this list. I love it and always have (I eat it in LA too). It tastes like water to me. Not sweet


Dukuh - I live in an area where dukuh is grown hence the name Kampung Dukuh. Dukuh are small whitish fruit that you can break open with you hands. Easier than peeling an orange. Inside there are small white parts. It's not very sweet maybe comparable to a grape in it's possibility to have an almost bitter/sour edge to its sweetness.


Papaya - it's orange with very black seeds. It looks like a gaping toothy mouth. I don't think it's very sweet but makes for a good mindless snack.
You can see my feets
Starfruit - It's shaped like a star!


And there are certain unpopular fruits here too. Such as kismis which are raisins but a couple people have translated it to me as plums like in the movie Barbie and 12 Plums. Then I gave my host mom dried cranberries and she called them kismis too. Either way if they're actually raisins or plums or whatever they are not popular.

There are fruit dishes here - like this soup below - just a bunch of fruits in sweet liquid stuff. There are lots of drinks too - some use jelly or avocado (which I hate).

Because I Stopped Before the End

Before I left for Indonesia I promised myself a couple things about my blog.
  1. I'd have lots of pictures
  2. I wouldn't be overly wordy
  3. And I wouldn't stop in the middle. I would see the whole year through.
    The last one is where I had the most problems. I did better than the middle but I still stopped before my year was over. I don't really regret it because I spent those last couple of weeks really being present in Indonesia but it has been bothering me recently.
    And so I am here a year later to rectify that situation. There are a couple of posts I never got around to publishing and even if just for myself I want this blog's story to end properly. And that is my explanation for the next couple of seemingly out of the blue posts about my year in Indonesia... a year later. Better late than never though, right?