mari kita makan

I could go on forever about how awesome masakan padang is. Although google translates it to “culinary field”, the actual meaning is closer to “farmer’s food”. Masakan padang is rice served with the eater’s choices from a spread of vegetables, eggs, soy, fish, meat and other accompanying foods.

One of my favourite things about masakan padang is how all the foods are arranged in plates carefully balanced on an elaborate arrangement of other plates, so that all the food is visible in the front window, even at a distance. It also makes it really easy to serve, by reducing the reaching distance.

Padang is really cheap and also allows vegans and vegetarians (this post is tagged “animals”) to eat to their satisfaction and choose from great variety, eliminating the hassle of modifying menus or limiting their choices. In fact, it’s got infinite customisability. It’s also really tasty, easy and unassuming. A comfort food of sorts. I eat it every day.

Padang of the week:
Price: Rp 10,000 (about $1.12), where I ate it (price can vary slightly)

This one’s got rice, vegetables, tempe, a deep fried egg, and chile*. A good place is more than happy to (as pictured) give you extra veg, and drown everything in coconut curry with no extra charge.

The tempe in Bali is consistently amazing. It’s firm to the tooth like well done pasta, and yet has a certain creamy texture. It’s got that wonderful nutty savouriness to it without the mal-fermented funk that sometimes comes with tempe in the US. And, it’s super cheap. The tempe pictured cost about 20 cents. Next time, I’m getting two.

Deep fried egg! is a delicacy all across Southeast Asia. It’s got all the nutrition of an egg, with all the delight of a french fry, this one topped with hot chiles and onions.

*There’s more! Bali has red and green chile, just like New Mexico does. What a weird coincidence. The recipes are remarkably similar, the green consisting mostly of ripe fresh chiles and the red consisting mostly of ripe dried chiles. They vary in taste from place to place, just like in New Mexico. Some are mild and savoury, others taste like a molotov cocktail.

And whilst die hard New Mexicans like myself swear by green, in Bali, you just have to get both.

Merry christmas!

Montezuma Fuller vs. Muhammad Gandhi

Hippy hoppy

After visiting IDDS, I had a great week-and-a-half in Santa Fe and other places, NM. I stopped on the way back for claw fights atop Mesa Mentosa and camping at Ghost Ranch (one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been), and happy fun times camping with the Stupin family in Colorado (on the way to and from IDDS). New Mexico is one of the most beautiful places on earth*.

I danced some tango in Santa Fe, which turned out to be really nice. Santa Fe (and surrounding area) has some great dancers, who are super friendly and sweet. I haven’t been dancing so much lately, and I forgot how having awesome dances with just a few people can make my evening.

I drove up to Taos, NM with Laura Stup, Papa Stup, and Carla Tennenbaum (artist extraordinaire from Brazil, who was at the last two IDDSes) to see the Earthship office/visitor center.

Earthships are SUPER AMAZING!

There are a few basic principles of Earthships (Earthships are houses people live in). They (quoting Earthship Biotecture):

-Heat and cool themselves naturally via solar/thermal dynamics
-Collect their own power from the sun and wind
-Harvest their own water from rain and snow melt
-Contain and treat their own sewage on site
-Produce a significant amount of food
-Are constructed using the byproducts of modern society like cans, bottles and tyres

Whilst most of these principles are really quite common-sensical (from just a simple efficiency viewpoint), what is really impressive is how well the Earthship folks design and build an integrated system that efficiently and effectively accomplishes the design goals, and continue to improve and optimise their system as they gain knowledge and experience.

The best part? They claim to be pretty much on par with the cost of conventional construction, per square foot. This is a really powerful thing: people no longer need to make an economic sacrifice to achieve an ideal or principle goal.

(Photo by Carla)

This feels like the future to me: it’s low impact, it’s beautiful, it makes economic sense (of course, don’t get me started on how I think that the true costs of producing goods and electricity and disposing of waste are not presented accurately to the consumer, encouraging people to live unsustainably), and, to use the words of the Earthship folks, if your pocket is deep enough [they] can design and build anything you want.

Still, I’m not one hundred percent satisfied with where Earthships are, just yet. There are two things that I’m just a little unsettled by:

The simpler of the two to explain is that many of their buildings use aluminium cans and glass bottles as “bricks”/filler material for concrete or adobe, to make walls. This is in line with their principles of using recycled materials, and also allows neat designs (in the case of bottles, it lets light pass through walls). I have a problem with them using cans in construction because aluminium is such a high value recyclable material. (glass does not have this feature) It takes a fraction of the energy to smelt new aluminium to melt down old aluminium and re-use it. And it takes a ton of energy to smelt new aluminium.

It just struck me as a little bit careless.

The second thing that unsettled me was a conversation between a visitor and a staff member. It wasn’t quite a conflict as a clash of ideals: the visitor had a house that was hooked up to the electrical grid, had an array of solar panels and was able to sell electricity back to the grid (produce a surplus of energy) despite using electric stoves and electric heat. The staff didn’t seem to approve of being connected to the grid, as if it might undermine the house’s energy independence — even though the house was actually energy positive, and Earthships rely on propane, a fossil fuel, for cooking and heating.

I didn’t have a problem with the ideas put forth per se, but was surprised by the defensiveness and disapproval.

Still, final verdict: Earthships are super awesome! One day I’ll live in a house that works just like that, harvests water and solar power and grows crops and has chickens (for eggs) and fish (for fish) which eat micro organisms that feed on the sewage stream of the house. Maybe goats?

*

All photo credits: Laura Stupin