Part VII
Give us this day, our daily rice

by Mad Dog

    This is quite a contrast to the U.S., where there’s a turkey in every house today and come January there will be a big one in the White House no matter how this silly election turns out. I have to say, if there’s one thing I’m really thankful for this year it’s that I’m not in the states so I don’t have to listen to those two spoiled brat prep school boys stamp their feet and throw temper tantrums about recounting votes. I can sit back, get the highlights, and listen to the rest of the world laugh because we ship Jimmy Carter off to every country on the face of the earth to monitor elections but—whoops!—we plum forgot to send him to Florida.

    I’m sure some restaurant here is making Thanksgiving dinner, but I haven’t heard about it. And I feel certain there are expats having an orphan’s dinner but not the few I know. (expats, by the way, are expatriates, or American’s living overseas, not a slang term for someone who’s had a sex change operation.) Besides, even if they are making a Thanksgiving dinner it won’t be traditional, since there isn’t a turkey to be found here. There’s a reason it was Ben Franklin who suggested the turkey as his country’s national bird and not Sukarno.

    That’s not to say there isn’t any poultry here. There are plenty of scrawny chickens running through the streets, each with about as much meat on it as Frank Perdue’s middle finger. And there are lots of ducks which are taken from rice field to rice field, cleaning the stray grains until they’re nice and fat and wind up on the dinner table. Just the other night I was in a restaurant which had a menu section listing six or seven pigeon dishes, though to be honest I doubt it was really pigeon. I’m pretty sure it was one of those translation errors. They probably meant cat.

    At first I wasn’t real impressed with the food, but I quickly learned to like it. Dishes like mie goreng (fried noodles), bakso (noodle soup with meatballs and fried wontons), sate, gado gado (vegetables and tofu with peanut sauce), and babi guling (roasted suckling pig) are all really good. If there’s a problem it’s that the food doesn’t have a lot of range, like say, Thai food. Or the wide selection you find in Singapore (see: Is That a Durian in Your Pocket or Have You Just Been To Singapore?) You understand why this is when you realize that many Balinese eat the same meal three times a day. On Bali, consistency is the spice of life.

    Nasi campur (nah·see cham·poor) is the national dish, and many Balinese eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If they want a between-meal snack they go into the kitchen and have some nice nasi campur. While it’s a drag for Mom to have to wake up at 4 A.M. to make it, the good side is the kids don’t come running into the house every afternoon after school yelling, “What’s for dinner, Mom?” They already know.

    Nasi is cooked rice and campur means mixed. Obviously it’s not named that because they mix up their menu, it’s called that because it’s a pile of rice with bits and pieces of whatever stuff they felt like making today, usually some meat-like things, chicken bones, fried something rind, half a hard boiled egg, a smattering of some vegetable searching for an English translation, and sambal, which is hot sauce used to deaden your taste buds.

How can you argue when there’s a picture of Chester Cheetah right there on the package and it says: “Chester Cheetah makin kerin aja! Chee-tos Snack yang…. KREESSH!” 

    Not all the food here is unfamiliar, though even the familiar isn’t as familiar as you’d like. Hunt’s ketchup is sweet. It’s also called saus tomat because kecap (keh·chap) is Indonesian for soy sauce. Best Foods mayonnaise is sweet too. Philadelphia cream cheese is imported from Australia and it’s not like the Philadelphia cream cheese I was raised on. It’s off-white, harder, and just doesn’t taste the same. It must be the kangaroo milk.

    Then there are Chee-tos. Since cheese pretty much doesn’t exist here, Chee-tos come in roasted corn and chicken grill flavors. Kind of defeats the name of the product, don’t you think? But I have to admit that the chicken grill flavor is pretty good. They have the same consistency as the quick fried to a crackly crunch ones only they taste like, well, they taste kinda sorta chickeny. And how can you argue when there’s a picture of Chester Cheetah right there on the package and it says: “Chester Cheetah makin kerin aja! Chee-tos Snack yang….KREESSH!” So far the only package I’ve seen that comes close to it is the Cadbury’s Crunchie bar a friend brought me from Brunei with the logo in Arabic and the ingredients listed in Arabic, Greek, and Spanish.

    Snacks are big here, though you have to be careful when you buy them. The Happy-tos package looks exactly like Fritos that didn’t make it through the spellchecker, and something tells me they didn’t make it through the taste-checker either. Then there’s the whole line of Hello Kitty snacks with packages that look about as cheap as a package can be, without bothering to tell you what’s in them, and have pools of grease in the bottom. Something tells me Sanrio doesn’t know about these.

Here in Bali McDonald's has Paket Nasi, which is rice with some fried chicken. While this is a nice touch, it’s not nearly as nice as Bolivia where they expanded the usual drink selection to include tea made from coca leaves, which coincidentally are the same leaves used to make cocaine. 

    I mostly eat in warungs, which are tiny roadside food stands. They range from funky to “wouldn’t exist if there was anything resembling a Board of Health on the island.” The food’s generally better than the restaurants and certainly tons cheaper. Providing, of course you have no moral objections to eating for under a dollar.

    I also eat from the food carts which are pushed through the streets. I’m told the carts are all made on Java and the men walk them here, selling their food along the way. Of course they take the ferry across the Bali Straits, but that’s only because there’s no word for amphibious in Indonesian. Or waterproofing. But we’ll leave a discussion of the now-in-force rainy season for another day.

    If you want familiarity in food you can find it in a few fast food restaurants. Here in Ubud the closest thing to fast food is the Dunkin’ Donuts counters which are in two grocery stores. There’s real fast food in Kuta, which is a tourist hell beach about an hour away, but I haven’t gotten up the nerve to head there yet. Though I did see a McDonald’s at the airport.

    One thing McDonald’s does which is admirable, aside from keeping their bathrooms clean and free so people like me can use them in any city in the world without having to eat there, is put one or two localized items on the menu. Hence the McSteak and Kidney Pie in England and the McPâté in France. (And now available in both countries: the McMadCow!) Here in Bali they have Paket Nasi, which is rice with some fried chicken for Rp7500, or about 85¢. For another Rp500 (6¢) you can even get it hot. While this is a nice touch, it’s not nearly as nice as Bolivia where they expanded the usual drink selection to include tea made from coca leaves, which coincidentally are the same leaves used to make cocaine. Some countries have all the luck.

    It’s oddly unsettling to watch people use their hand to mush food together, scoop it up, and put it in their mouth. I was raised not to play with my food. In fact, I was sent to bed hungry a few times for doing it. So what do Balinese mothers tell their children when they’re growing up, “Stop using that fork or you’re going to bed without dinner!”? Or “How many times have I told you, play with your food!”

    Being a good tamu, I’ve eaten with my hands a few times, usually because I’m in someone’s home or in a warung where they don’t even have silverware. Actually it’s “hand”, because you do not eat with the left one. That’s reserved for wiping yourself, but I don’t want to totally ruin your appetite by pursuing that discussion right now. In fact, it’s not necessary to remind me about it later—if I forget, that’s fine.

    For some odd reason eating with my hands wasn’t nearly as much fun as I think it should be. This will probably please my mother to no end since it means something she spent countless hours drumming into my head actually took. Too bad it wasn’t the one about finding a good-paying career.

    Finally, Balinese food is very literal food. Fried rice is exactly what it says, as is fried noodles. And nasi campur, as I’ve mentioned, is definitely a rice mixture. But the winner of the literal food sweepstakes has to be the ice cream sandwich I first saw when it was being sold at a cremation ceremony. It was ice cream, chocolate syrup, and some kind of red syrup served between two slices of white bread. Mmmmm! Sounds like the perfect ending to a Thanksgiving meal. If I could only find a turkey.

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