Helloooooo, Bali!

Alas...

...though I've just joined this blogging community, I must be going pretty soon. Only for three weeks, though!

In a few short days I will be on the plane to Bali, Indonesia, the beautiful little island sandwiched between Java and Lombok. Actually, I'll be on the plane to JFK airport for an overnight in New York, followed by the plane to Seoul, South Korea, followed by the plane to Denpasar. I've never been to any of these places before, so it will surely be an adventure!

SO. With a country and province new to me come customs, foods, arts and lifestyles that are new to me. Most of what I will be studying there is Gamelan music, playing in a gong kebyar ensemble. Gamelan is actually the term for 'ensemble,' and there are many different types. For instance - Beleganjur is the marching style Gamelan, performing not only for cremation ceremonies, but also in large contests held throughout the island. When our group gets there, the Bali Arts Festival will just be ending, so hopefully we will get to see all the action for at least a little while upon arrival!

Dancing is one of the coolest art forms in Bali. The dancers, male and female, pop their eyes wide, move delicately, wiggling fingers fluidly and moving so well in ornate costume to the Gamelan ensemble’s music - it's so beautiful. We're chilling with an Australian man named Doug who has leased a compound, a bit of which is pictured above. Fun fact - non-Indonesian peoples cannot actually own land in Indonesia, they must lease it or rent it, and you have to leave the country every 6 months for at least 24 hours.

Anyhoo, I'm uber excited to see painters and instrument-makers in action, to perform with dancers, to learn a bit of drumming, and to figure out the strange bathroom set-up. We have a sort of nozzle thing, but there's no real shower, per se, and there's just a floor with a drain, no real separate space or anything. Again, adventures!

I'm also excited for the food. Just about everything we'll have will be cooked save for fruit. The bananas we're going to have are ADORABLE. They're less than half the size of a regular banana. And snakefruit gets its name from the feel of its skin. Eeee! I'm so, so excited. Other fun facts, a Balinese meal isn't really a meal unless there's rice with it, and eating isn't a super-celebrated act because it is associated with animals. Being animalistic is very taboo in Bali. There's also a lot of right v. left, good v. evil, clean v. unclean, and nearly every religious ritual carried out pertains to maintaining balance between gods/spirits and demons.

I'll post more Balinese fun facts in the days to come, and I might have WiFi there to put up pictures! This is going to be wonderful - no better way to get to know a culture than to jump right in.

Ingredients in a 12" Honey Wheat wrap from our student center dining hall

Bleached Enriched Wheat Flour (Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thaimine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Whole Wheat Flour, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Contains One of More of the Following: Cottonseed Oil, Soybean Oil), Mono And Diglycerides, Honey Whole Wheat Blend [Dextrose, Corn Starch, Sugar, Natural And Artificial Flavors, Fructose, Caramel Color, Sucralose (Artificial Sweetener), Less Than 2% Tricalcium Phosphate and Silicon Dioxide Added to Prevent Caking], Contains 1.5% or less of the following: Salt, Baking Powder (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Corn Starch, Monocalcium Phosphate), Fumaric Acid, Sodium Bicarbonate, Dough Conditioner (Wheat Flour, Calcium Sulfate, Sorbic Acid), Preservatives (Sodium Propionate and Potassium Sorbate), Cellulose Gum.

Oh. My. Goodness. I just ate that. Ylaargh. Well, what's done is done. I went and looked at the ingredient lists of some other things. A spicy chicken yields another paragraph worth of strange things such as Artificial Green Bell Pepper Flavor, spice extractives, disodium guanylate, and dehydrated garlic. Yummy. How does this happen???

I'm currently in the process of writing an extensive list of questions I have to ask people who work at my school. I have a lot of organizing to do, a lot of people to e-mail... well, a lot to do. Though there is a "Behind the Scenes" page on the dining website, most of the explanations for food purchasing are vague. Consider the following quotes from the page:

"All fresh, frozen, and dry foods along with food related items, are centrally purchased from reputable, FDA-approved manufacturers and distributors. In fact, (the school) routinely inspects the production plants and warehouses from where we purchase our foods."

"Beginning at 5:00 a.m., semi-trailers arrive at the CSC dock to replenish the stock levels in our giant freezer and other storage locations. Buying centrally and in bulk helps keep student meal plan costs to a minimum."

"Each product purchased for service goes through a blind tasting process to be selected for service in our dining locations."

Couple things - to the first point, who are these FDA-approved manufacturers/distributors? Are they located near the school? What are the FDA guidelines? Production plants for what? Food PRODUCTS or food? Who inspects these plants? In what parts of the plants? How often do these inspections occur?

To the second point... student meal plan costs. Okay, that's understandable. Exactly how much would buying meat from a local farmer up the price? How many costs did you compare before settling on this one? Are we talking monetary costs or health costs to students (because health costs are probably higher)? "Giant freezer"???

To the third... apparently they decide the brand of the food products we bring in by blind taste test. Well, goodness, if you blindfolded me and gave me chocolate cake or Twinkies or whatever, of course I would say it tastes good! But our taste buds have been compromised. Once valuable evolutionary traits (sugar content in non-processed foods generally indicates that the food is okay to eat), they have now fallen under the spell of engineered food products, not whole foods. Oy. The worst part is, they wouldn't keep stocking a lot of crap if we would just stop eating it, but we don't. A major part of this is educating the student body. The problem is, people just don't care that much about food or where it comes from anymore. We dedicate a smaller part of our stressful lives to food, eating on the go, not really dining anymore in dining halls. It's upsetting.

Earlier today, in line for lunch, I overheard two girls speaking French to one another, probably exchange students judging by their rapid speech and, well, general lack of English. One motioned for the other to come over and look at a bowl on her tray. It was filled with some awkward cream-colored thing, maybe with pasta in it, and little green thingies - I couldn't tell even though I was standing a foot and a half away at most. She had a disgusted look on her face, and though I didn't catch everything her friend said in response, they seemed to be very upset with the food in our dining halls. I can't imagine coming from France to America and witnessing the food quality, portion sizes, the way it's prepared... holy goodness. Culture shock indeed.

P.S. - that picture? Of people with tons of cookies? That is on the nutrition resources homepage. Huh.

This is the first of what will become many annoying posts.

Hello blogging world!

I'm quite new to you, and I hope we can be friends. I never thought I'd end up writing a blog, but then, I'm just now discovering the things I'm passionate enough to write extensively about. University will do that to you, I suppose.

Anyway. My main purpose for this blog is food. Music and food. Music, food, and anything interesting. Lots of things, I suppose. Mostly food though. Recently I came upon a beautifully written book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, Knight professor at UC Berkeley and all-around awesome man. Throughout this work, he follows, to the best of his ability, the paths of different types of foods and how they end up on our plates. I've wrestled with my weight and food choices for a long time, but this... this book sparked something in me, some passion that I'm just now feeling radiate from my head to the tips of each of my phalanges.

Pollan investigates fast food, big organic, a farm in Virginia, and hunter-gatherer techniques for obtaining a meal. He raises some moral questions, raises some ridiculously good points, and has demonstrated something about our current mode of living by feeling the need to write a book about where your food comes from in the first place. Who ever thought we'd need a book to tell us where food comes from? Food is this vital, critical, beautiful thing in our lives that we need every day. How have we become so incredibly separated from that which we shovel into our mouths? Could YOU tell me where your burger came from, all of the ingredients in your granola bar, what, exactly, xanthan gum is and how it's used, and what is intrinsically 'good' about a Snickers bar?

Thought not. I can't, exactly, either. That's why I'm investigating. You know, I'm 20-ish pounds overweight by my own standards, and I'm sick of counting calories. I'm sick of the sodium intake, the food pyramid guides, the protein/fat/carb balancing act, the food journals, the health websites - it's ridiculous! How is it that this country can be so obsessed with health and STILL have such an obese/overweight/sick population? What a paradox. The health-obsessed, sickly country. I just want to eat with pleasure, dine without stress... experience cuisine and delicious food and know what's going into my body, my temple. Culture is supposed to be adaptive. Cuisines are adaptive. That's why French people can have a croissant and not end up with diabetes. Why is our American food culture killing us - is it even culture anymore if it's detrimental to our health?

So. This brings me to my quest: I am going to figure out where my university gets its food from. I want to know what all we bring in to this institution, from who, and how these people produce food. I want to know how the cafeteria workers and kids working at dining halls and little markets feel, what they know about the food they prepare, day after day. I want to know the ingredients in one of the tortilla wraps at the little deli counter in our student center, or if I could even memorize them.

Of course, this quest will not be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is in this country, it seems. But I must do it, for me, for my fellow students, for everyone, to bring us back to what has become a mindless thing: eating. First on my list? Tonight at dinner, I'm going to ask at least one of the women working at the dining hall where the meat they're preparing comes from. Let's see what they know.