With school six days a week – though it’s only a
half-day on Saturdays – Sundays are the one day that we have entirely free in
Yogyakarta, Indonesia. During the week my host aunt, a chef who has her
own catering service, brings homemade dishes in the afternoons that we heat up
again for dinner and then, if there are leftovers, again for breakfast the next
morning. Cooked foods sit in the center of the kitchen table underneath a large
basket-like cover that keeps the bugs out and then at mealtimes we serve ourselves
rice from the rice cooker on the counter - always the central part of the meal
- and top it with the dishes on the table as we sit down to eat. We often fry
tofu or tempeh, or steam vegetables and set them out on a plate to go along
with the other dishes; and if there aren’t enough leftovers from the night
before we might make a fried egg with vegetables for breakfast. But on Sundays
my host sisters make the main dishes for the day.
At 5:30am last Sunday
morning Mbak Ayu, my oldest host sister, poked her head into my bedroom to wake
me up to get ready to head to the morning pasar, or traditional outdoor market,
to buy ingredients for cooking that morning. I groggily pulled myself out
of bed, the promise of bubur kacang hijau, a sweet mung bean porridge that you
can often find at the market, the only thing keeping me from laying my head
back down on the soft pillow and falling back asleep for a few more hours.
The market is within
walking distance of our house so we set out on foot, me trying to contain my
yawns. I always have trouble getting up early but the mornings really are a
wonderful time to be outside; while the air is still cool and fresh, before the
roads become crowded with traffic and the air becomes hot and polluted. The
colors, the sounds, the sweet smells of cooking foods - everything is so
vibrant and beautiful in the morning. We passed a man sitting beside a heap of
green coconuts as he scooped white flesh from the shells; warm aromas wafted
from storefronts selling gorengan, assorted fried snacks like battered tempeh,
and cassava fritters filled with palm sugar; and pedicab drivers slowly biked
past on their morning routes.
We turned down a long narrow street off of the main
road we walked past fields of rice and grasses, brilliant shades of green
glowing in the warm sunlight. The street was dotted with trees bearing every
type of tropical fruit imaginable - massive spiky jackfruit tugging down on
their flexible branches, bunches of bright pink rambutan with their soft spiky
hair, and dark maroon cacao pods hanging nobly from their high branches.
