Firsts

I have a growing list of firsts, new things I am doing for the first time.  Somehow they are all occurring together at once in a clump this week. Standing alone they are potentially invigorating, even enlivening.  Packed into one week they are a bit much and none of them is particularly relaxing. I had thought I would arrive in Bali and, after the extreme intensity of the last two years, take a few months of ease, some time to just be.  Instead I am continuing my advanced course in maintaining a balanced central nervous system through any kind of circumstance.

Most of my 24 previous trips to Bali involved eating in many restaurants; now I am the restaurant, (but with weekends off).  A lover of improvisation in the kitchen, I am now consistently producing, and training my assistant to produce, the same dishes so that each item has a reliable flavor.  This involves a skill set that includes writing out recipes, measuring, maintaining inventory of ingredients, pricing out costs, and keeping track of sales, not jazz improv.  

So what did I do this weekend?  I filled every moment of it, and parts of the week before it, with scuba diving certification.  Without a moment of fun floating with the colorful fishes, without time to get comfortable with the equipment and breathing underwater, we moved immediately into emergency training skills like removing our masks and replacing them, and having our air turned off and then back on by the dive master, not particularly soothing activities.  I took the written test, with (bare) minimal study, in a loud seaside restaurant full of vacationers.  On Sunday we were to have our last 2 dives, completing the course, but our air cylinders had all received contaminated air and we had to abort.  That means another journey to the coast and another day devoted to discomfort and sometimes anxiety under the sea in the name of safety.  During the Christmas holiday we are going to Malaysia where I hope to finally have fun floats with pretty fishes and a dive master who doesn’t touch my air supply.

(On the way to shore after our aborted scuba dive, we had a dramatic James Bond type encounter with two testosterone driven Russian spear fishermen.  Our Balinese boat diver, keenly aware of his surroundings as Balinese people are, pointed out to our dive master that two men were dangerously fishing protected reef life in the scuba zone.  When our boat approached the men, one swam out to sea and the other denied fishing, spear in hand.  Our boatman drove to the fishermen’s buoy, a dead reef fish tied to the side, and pulled the buoy onto our boat.  The enraged fisherman tried to mount our boat and threatened our dive master directly with his spear.  Mark, our dive master, repeatedly asked the man for his spear gun, telling him he could reclaim it at the dive shop, but the Russian man refused to comply and denied understanding English.  Then in English, insisted Mark give him his dive computer in exchange for the spear gun.  The Russian’s trust level was low and his adrenalin was high, a dangerous combination.  He made a grab for his buoy, catching the cording in his fingers and yanking hard. Mark, using his dive knife, cut the cording free.  We returned to shore where our boat driver notified his village authorities who in turn contacted the local police.  Within moments every Balinese person up and down the beach knew what was happening.  When the police arrived the village authorities knew exactly who the responsible men were and which restaurant they were sitting in.  Mark and the machine gun carrying police had a polite discussion with the spear fishermen and their girl friends, and eventually the police drove away with the spears, holding them until, I suspect, some money changed hands.)     

During all of my previous Bali trips I hired a driver.  I was content to be a passive participant in the dance of the Balinese roads. This week in a move toward independence, I have been learning to drive a motorbike, starting off around a flat futbol field and progressing to actually driving on the road, passing trucks, swerving around potholes, swimming in the sea of other motorbikes.  Look out!  The roads are for the most part unmarked and any rules seem to have exceptions if convenient.  For instance, in Bali vehicles drive on the left, but if you are on a motorbike turning right and feel like continuing on the right, you can just go ahead and do it.  Same thing goes for a one way street; that’s one way for cars, but if you are on a motorbike and want to drive against the flow of traffic, go for it.  Plenty of others will join you. 

An entirely orange butterfly just flew into our house, danced in front of Sofia and I to our delight, fluttered across the length of the room, took a moment to visit our orchids and left as silently as it entered.  This is a first.

One more first:  today I was commissioned to cater a raw dinner party this Friday night.  In addition to my warung prep, I will be creating a multiple course gourmet meal on a stunning property overlooking the Ayung River.  

Let’s see... how much more can I juggle?....

Food

This week I began offering raw food at the Green School warung.  Suddenly I am busy.  This is an understatement.  Food prep began on Tuesday for a Wednesday inaugural launch; soaking, sprouting, chopping, grating, blending, dehydrating.  I thought I had made enough to last a couple of days or maybe through the week.  Then I sold out of nearly everything the first day.  On the list of potential problems, this one is pretty high up in the favorable category, yet it is something to contend with, if I would like to include sleeping in my daily activities.  In order to create more delicacies for the next day I was now working around the clock.  Truly.  I am preparing all the food, hand crafting and selling all the food in the warung, explaining about raw food, how I create it and why, then preparing again.  This is completely unsustainable... and at the Green School, model of sustainability!  

When we first arrived in Bali we hired a pembantu (helper) who is lovely in many ways but turned out to be unreliable.  She is still fetching our drinking water from the school well and doing our laundry.  I had just found a new pembantu and she started working this very week.  Komang is smart, trustworthy and eager to please, but speaks no English at all.  I have been training her, in my limited Indonesian, to assist me in the food prep while doing all the food prep.  Today I said something in Indonesian that I swear was close to correct (close, of course, doesn't count): Komang started giggling and then we were both cracking up laughing.

Spending the day in the Green School warung is enjoyable.  The warung staff members are lovable and Sri, the woman in charge, is a bright light.  The kids flow in during snack time and at lunch.  Parents of the students and various visitors eat raw macaroons, raw tropical cookies with star fruit or raw brownies (with a raw creme anglais piped on top or a mint fudge drizzle) with their cappuccinos.  (Asher has now brought his locally grown, fresh roasted coffee into the warung, upgrading the espresso to the delight of the international coffee drinkers.  We have infiltrated the warung!)  I started with one lunch item, mango/coconut wraps (I order dozens of young coconuts delivered to my house by wheelbarrow from the Green School gardens) with ginger cashew pate, shredded vegetables and a sesame dipping sauce, thinking sweets would be more accessible to raw food newcomers, but the wraps are a hit.  I need to make more and more of them.  They are the first item I teach Komang to prepare, showing her how to smooth them just so and sprinkle each one with chopped mint.

The table I have been using in the warung (bamboo, of course) is not dedicated to me; I share the table with the lunch staff.  Before lunchtime two men come and carry my table away, back to the Heart of School where it used to live before I came along with my raw food, then return it (usually) after lunch is finished.  That is rather inconvenient, for all of us.  Fortunately John Hardy, who has been sampling all of my wares each day, recommended that I choose whichever table I like from the kitchen where, as I have already written, many interesting experiments in bamboo furniture design reside, but do not get much use.  The kitchen, located across the river from the school, is a rather inconvenient place from which to move my chosen table.  I'm wondering if the staff will carry it by hand across the rustic bamboo bridge (closest to the kitchen), or the newer, safer Green School bamboo bridge, or if they will find a truck, load it on the back and drive it all the way around (driving across the river by car requires going a distance out of your way either north or south)... Or will I be the one to carry it?

Friday was International Day at the Green School.  Each classroom chose a country to represent, studied their chosen country, decorated their room and created a presentation, including costumes, music, song or dance, for the weekly Friday assembly.  Loads of parents attended and made loads of food platters from the various countries.  With all that (free) food around the possibility existed that they would ignore my raw food in the warung.  Nope, not at all.  It was a busy day.  By the end of Friday I was beyond exhausted, ridiculously sleep deprived and not in a particularly clear state of mind.  Fortunately I found a second person to soon begin helping me in the warung so I will have freedom to come and go.

Friday night our friends and neighbors, Mona and Ajay, originally from India, invited us to join their family celebration of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights commemorating of the victory of good over evil.  We sang sacred Sanskrit chants while waving a tray of lit candles, then placed the candles in different parts of the house and along the path to the doorway, assisting Lakshmi, Goddess of Abundance, in finding her way to their home.  It was sweet and intimate, and an honor to be included in the ritual as well as the meal of delicious Indian food.  I had been having a hankering for Indian spices and yes, I tasted the cooked food.  And yes, I felt the difference the next day.  I think my next creation for the warung will be Indian samosas raw style.

I needed a weekend in a big way.  We had previously planned a big weekend away, not exactly the weekend I was needeing at this point on the exhaustion timeline.  I came close to sending my family off on the journey and staying home alone, but I love an adventure and ended up packing clothes and... ugh... food, again.  (An overdose of food preparation could become a diet trend.  I find the more I am around it, the less I want to eat it, although I adore creating new recipes, blessing the food and sharing it with others.  To me food is an art form.)  We started off at Tree Tops, a series of zip line courses in the immaculately kept Bali Botanical Gardens, with most of the Green School first grade families and some others who wanted to join in.   We used to have a zip line on our property in Oregon and Sofia was afraid to ride it.  Now she is clipping and unclipping her carabiners from one line to the next with her buddies.  A big group of people and death defying zips through the trees into rope nets did not really constitute a restful day for me.  We ended the afternoon, along with 4 other families, in a well appointed lodge way up in the Bali highlands with a view of a lake.   We brought our own food and many cooks took over the kitchen.  I thought I had escaped food preparation when the request came for me to make salads.  No rest for the weary.  On the counter were whole enormous fishes, eyes bulging, headed toward the grill, and beside it I prepared my raw, vegan salad mandalas.  First the children ate at the large table and once the adults sat down I was, finally, asleep on the couch.

The next day I  felt like a human being again.  (Should I tell you about my husband waking up the lodge playing his flugelhorn at 4 a.m.?  I guess not....) After a rousing session of pillow fighting and tickle attacks with the 8 children, I took myself for a walk up the mountain through fertile fields.  Following behind an elderly woman carrying a load of greens on her head, I came upon a large solitary boulder seemingly out of place in the green landscape.  In true Bali style it had become an alter and someone had already placed the morning offerings in its cleft.  Further along the trail someone called to me; a woman, her husband and their shy 6 year old daughter were tilling the soil.  She invited me to use her hoe and I was honored to do so.  While the husband and I hoed, we all spoke about growing food, soil quality, our families, even American politics, all in my (very) limited Indonesian.

In the afternoon we caravanned down steep and nearly unpassably broken roads to remote hot springs.  A loud and close thunderclap, sounding like a bomb, announced yet another torrential downpour.  We walked down the hill to the hot springs in the rain, under the bamboo, the path lined with bamboo leaves.  Soaked, we arrived at the tubs to... soak.  The human made pool with lovely, fresh and nicely hot water (the weather is refreshingly cool in the upper elevations) merging with the cool rain, all beside a waterfall rushing with muddy rain runoff.  We frolicked in the water beside many Balinese locals come for a soak on their day off.

Then back to the Bambu Village.  Before more food sourcing and more food prep, we hopped on our motorbike and drove into Ubud where Dave Stringer (visiting from LA) led an ecstatic kirtan.  What joy!

The second week with raw food in the warung is more comfortable.  I have someone helping me prepare the food and someone working in the warung making wraps.  John Hardy brought his wife Cynthia over to sample my food for the first time and she raved about it.  A little later Cynthia brought her friend Donna Karan (the Empress of Fashion) over for a taste.  Donna and I naturally fell into a conversation about spirituality, Kabbalah, blending Judaism and Buddhism and Hinduism.  Donna has been eating raw food for years.  After finishing up, Donna told me mine was the best raw food she has ever eaten.  Now that is another great compliment to bask in, from someone who has access to the best of the best all the time.  Perhaps I am earning the title my friend Georgia has given me, Goddess of Yum.