Getting closer!

Well, we're less than five weeks away. Unbelievable!

Anyway, last Sunday we met at the home of Martin and Mary Catherine Limbird in Muncie. Both are world travelers (and Rotarians) and wanted to give us a bit of advice before we left. Mary Catherine told us some good tips and tricks about packing, and we also talked about the point of the GSE experience. Very helpful evening! I made a few notes about things that I don't want to forget such as a Tide stain stick and some duct tape :-)

For dinner, they fixed us Rijsttafel (rice table), the crown jewel of Indonesian cuisine. South East Asia has had a profound impact on Dutch cuisine.  Why? Because the Dutch ruled Indonesia, once the richest agricultural region in the world for 320 years. The Moluccas, a part of the Indonesian archipelago, were the original Spice Islands, suppling the entire world with black pepper, nutmeg, mace, and cloves. These centuries of Dutch rule left an indelible mark on the country's cuisine.

They are responsible for the Rijsttafel, which originated with Dutch plantation owners who liked to sample selectively from Indonesian cuisine. It became a kind of tradition, and the Dutch because of their fondness for Rijsttafel, introduced it into the Netherlands. Today, in both the Netherlands and Indonesia, the Rijsttafel is a real culinary pleasure.

Coconut milk is used in many of the Rijsttafel dishes. Coriander, pepper and garlic are also used along with basil, bay leaves, cardamom, cassia, chilli, ginger, galangal, lemon grass, peanuts, saffron, scallions, shallots, soy sauce, star anise, tamarind, turmeric, shrimp paste and dried anchovies (yes, I did a bit of online research for these paragraphs!)

Some of the well known Indonesian dishes are gado-gado (vegetables with peanut sauce), nasi goreng (fried rice with meat or seafood), sambals (various types of spice relishes), and sateh (grilled skewers of meat served with a peanut sauce). Mary Catherine fixed much of this for us, which was all delicious!

For a gourmet Indonesian meal, steamed or boiled rice is always the centerpiece. This is accompanied by numerous dishes of beef, chicken, duck, goat, all kinds of seafood and vegetables. These can be boiled, grilled or roasted, steamed, stir or deep fried, and served with several kinds of relishes and sauces.

Photos: 

1. Mary Catherine explains the dishes

2. The dishes!

3. Group photo after dinner. From left to right: Dick, Kevin, Martin, Mary Catherine, Heather, me, David. Sorry that Heather is snoozing in the photo.

Making Lists

We're getting closer! Flights leave six weeks from tomorrow. The South Korea team returned this week and I'm eager to hear more of their stories. They've got some great pictures and blog postings at http://kimchicorn.blogspot.com/2010/03/korean-cuisine-retrospective.html if you're interested in learning more about their trip.

I've been starting to organize trip items in my spare bedroom: an inflatable neck pillow, a bottle of Tylenol, a new tube of lip balm. And I'm starting to make some lists of things I need to remember to do before I leave, such as paying the water and electric bill in advance, fertilizing the lawn, and getting some dollars exchanged for Euros. 

I've also discovered some interesting things, such as the fact that my debit/ATM card is not accepted in the Netherlands. Too much chance of fraud, says the credit union. I've also discovered that our airline (Continental) will charge for an exit row seat and charges $45 for the second checked bag ($50 if you wait to check it at the airport). Guess I'll split that in half and pretend that it's $22.50 for each bag instead. It's also an 8.5-hour flight from Newark to Amsterdam. The good thing about our plane is that plugs are available in each row. Good. That way I can play Ramp Champ and Tap Tap Revenge on the iPhone to my heart's content :-)

We are meeting Sunday night in Muncie where the Limbirds (Rotary members) will be fixing us a Dutch meal and giving us some travel tips. I'm hoping that I'll have a draft of our brochure to pass out at the meeting as well. Depends on how well Butler does in the NCAA this week. Go Dawgs!