Adventures in Shopping

In just a few weeks, our family will be heading to the U.S. for a short summer furlough.  After a challenging two years that included a move, various community crises, noise adjustments, aging, dealing with inebriated people, adjusting to D's new travel schedule, and a busy teaching schedule, I am feeling super ready for a break.  One of the things I always enjoy and look forward to is the U.S. shopping experience.  I can't wait to shop in a climate-controlled, clean grocery store that has everything I need IN ONE PLACE.  Or to go clothes-shopping and find clothes that actually fit me.  Luxury.

It's a far cry from the shopping I do here, which is adventurous at best.  I usually get groceries from the local pasar (open market) plus several other stores and the experience is spread out over several days.  Shopping for clothes is very hit or miss, as sizes are different and we just don't have petite Asian bodies.  Recently during a jeans-shopping excursion with my daughter, we couldn't find anything longer than 28. 

And yet, despite the shopping challenges, we continue to eat well and to accumulate stuff.  It's embarrassing.  Today we were able to download some of our excess at the community Barang Sale. [barang is one of those great Indonesian words that doesn't have an exact English translation; we use it to mean "stuff," "things," "junk," and "jive," as in, "Carter, get your barang off the coffee table."] The sale is held at the kids' school, and the local expat community, along with local friends and workers, turn out in force.  Our goal was to leave with less than we brought, because inevitably the kids (ahem, and not just the kids) see other people's barang they want.  

The hordes waiting to get in

 As my friend, who was manning a table next to mine, philosophically mused, "It's not so much a sale as it is a missionary swap."  We sold lots of clothes, and came home with two surfboards.  

Over the past few months I've fallen into a Saturday morning pasar shopping routine with my friend Libby. The pasar is not the best-smelling place, and it can be rather warm, and if you're claustrophobic you would hate it.  Other than that, it's the best place to find fresh food. I took my camera along last week and got these shots:

 

This lady has a sweet smile.  She usually adds in a few extra tomatoes to my bag.

 

Did I mention it was smelly?  This is one of the contributors: dried fish.

Below are two ladies selling cones of sago, which are cooked into a thick porridge called papeda, a local dish with the consistency of glue.

This is where plastic bags go to die.

 

This is my chicken man.  Note the blue money lying right next to the entrails.  Lovely.  He cuts up the chicken however I want it.  If it's a big order and he can't do the math in his head to figure out the cost, he uses his finger to "write" in the chicken juice on the table.

 

I've never actually bought one of the bundles below, but I think they're cool.  Little bunches of the spices, chiles, and leaves you need to make a certain dish.

This is my coconut lady.  For about 30 cents you can buy a small bag of freshly grated coconut. Hello, coconut cream pie.

 

This photo shows some of the produce available: guavas, bananas, corn, pineapples, cucumbers, and jackfruit.

In addition to sago, sweet potatoes are a staple of many locals' diets.

I love greens.  For about 80 cents a bunch, you can get the green of your choice.  I'm partial to the type in the middle.

 

Just bought your veggies and suddenly decide you need to get your pants hemmed?  No problem.  There's a tailor at the pasar.

 

Libby and I usually hire a guy with a wheelbarrow to follow us and help schlep our stuff around.

 The rest of the pasar experience is continued at home, where I spend a few hours putting everything away.  It's a lot of work, but I'm thankful for what we can get. 

Blah Bread and Pet Rocks

Lately it seems that my approval rating as a mom is highly dependent on the quality of food coming out of my kitchen.  Maybe it has something to do with having two ravenous teenagers in the house.  Poll my kids and you’ll find that homemade pickles, after-school cookies, and weekend hamburgers send my numbers through the roof.  So when I made bread last week and forgot to put in the salt and my kids were still forced to eat it, the numbers took a nose dive.

Have you ever had bread without salt?  You might as well just open a bag of flour and eat it straight than mess with eating the blah-ness that is salt-free bread.  No amount of butter and jam could cover up the fact that it was a big fat food fail for Mama.  And I was too cheap to chuck it and start over.

But I think I redeemed myself, at least with the younger kids, when I green-lighted a project the next day.  I made the supreme mother sacrifice: I let the kids paint.

What is it with painting that makes it so hard to say “yes”?  I’ll tell you – it’s the newspapers, brushes, paints, mugs of water, smocks (which I just discovered that Ibu L – God love her – had cut up to make rags). All that prevention and I still end up with paint in my hair.

I feel like I’ve spent a good many of my parenting years either cleaning up messes (exploding diapers, toddler food fights, midnight pukes, playdate pandemonium) or trying to prevent them (“stay outside till it’s your turn to shower,” “eat that outside,” “I’ll pay you a dollar if you puke in the toilet” – thanks Jon and Ceri for that tip).  Kids are messy, and most of it is inevitable.  And when the outside world is so darn messy (you should have seen the puddle of sludge I put my foot into at the pasar this week), I need my home to have some semblance of order and cleanliness to stay sane.

So to invite the mess and chaos – to allow them to paint, or help you cook, or do experiments – well, that just kicks you up into the Supermom category and redeems any salt-free bread mishaps.

And you might just get a cute pet rock out of it.

Chik-fil-A it ain't

Sometimes, we just get a hankering for Chik-fil-A.  There is a local restaurant in Sentani that does a pretty good chicken sandwich, but it's just not the same as a Chik-fil-A-pickle-juice-soaked-into-the-bun-chicken sandwich.  I recently came across this recipe which promised a chicken sandwich that tasted just like it. The skeptic in me said "no way" but I decided to give it a whirl.

 This recipe would of course be much easier in the U.S., where I could just go out and buy beautiful pieces of chicken, pickles, and buns, although if I were in the U.S. I'd probably just go to the nearest Chik-fil-A.  Anyway, here's how it went...

Step One - Make the pickles.

Step Two - Go to the pasar, get the chicken

Step Three - At home, make the chicken look purty, then marinate in pickle juice per Food Babe's recipe

Step Four - Make the buns

Step Five - Bread the chicken (pictured below.  Me, still sporting my pool wear.) 

Step Six - Fight the urge to smack a certain teenager of mine who takes one look and declares "that looks nothing like a Chik-fil-A."

Step Seven - The final product.

Yep, no waffle fries, no lemonade, and very questionable pickles.  It definitely was not a Chik-fil-A sandwich.  But, it tasted just fine, and it will make the next Chik-fil-A sandwich we eat, whenever and wherever that may be, taste all the better.