I recently had the opportunity to spend 3 days in
Bogor - hanging out with a family I know there, touring the famous botanical gardens, and meeting with professors and other government officials in agricultural and community development.
Institut Pertanian Bogor (
Bogor Agricultural Institute) is the top
ag school in Indonesia, boasting more than 25,000 students.
Afif (above), my personal tour guide for the trip through the botanical gardens, is the son of an Indonesian man, Pak Firdaus, who studied his Ph.D. in Plant Breeding at Kansas State University from 1985-1989. When I first met Pak Firdaus, who is now the director of a national vegetable research center, we felt an immediate bond as fellow KSU Alumni. He's since been a great help as I pursue experience and opportunities to understand Indonesian agricultural development better. He and his wife dusted off their photo album to show me their memories of living in Jardine Hall, driving through corn fields, and protesting in front of the Union.
Don't let anyone fool you. Bamboo trees are not small.
The Indonesian diet is based upon rice. As my Indonesian friends say, "if there's no rice, there's no meal." Rain or shine, we eat rice three times a day. Sometimes its fried, sometimes its yellow, sometimes is wrapped in banana leaves, and sometimes is just steamed - but its always there, the essential foundation of every meal. The above plate is topped off with a mixture of cooked veggies to the right, and beef with potatoes on the left. Due to economic constraints, beef appears on our plate just about as often as the full moon appears in the night sky. Instead, we are usually nourished with protein from fish, chicken, or soybean products such as tofu.
The white swirly thing is called kerupuk, a crispy crackerish creation made from cassava. Mixed in with the green beans is tempe, a fermented soybean product.
The yellow sauce is called gule, which adds flavor and spice to the otherwise bland rice. Another option to flavor rice is sambal, a red chili sauce with a good kick to it. Food is usually eaten in one of two manners. 1) with a spoon in the right hand as the main "scooping" utensil and simultaneously a fork in the left as a "mixing" utensil. 2) with the right hand. 