Cooking and exploring village with Coline

That afternoon, a young girl from France contacted me via WhatsApp. She asked about my availability to hold a cooking class at my house. She also want to cooking and exploring village with me. Her name is Coline, and she was touring Java and Bali alone. Since I didn’t have any tours at the time, I agreed to Coline’s request.

After discussing the time and type of dishes we would cook together, we made a schedule to meet. She would come to my house using online transportation. Around 9 a.m., Coline arrived at my house. Before starting to cook, I invited Coline for a bicycle tour of the village, visiting several places such as the traditional market, a tofu and tempeh factory, a blacksmith, and keris factory.

Our first stop was the traditional market, where we bought some vegetables and spices that we would use for cooking that afternoon. This was Coline’s first experience entering a traditional market in Indonesia. She was very enthusiastic to see the many elder people and friendly sellers. After exploring the traditional market, we continued our bicycle tour to the keris factory.

Traditional cooking and exploring village by bike

Keris is an heirloom that has been passed down from generation to generation from our ancestors. So we need to preserve it. Keris crafts currently only exist in a few places, it is very a pity that in my village there is someone who pursues making keris.

We had the opportunity to see part of the process, which took a long and complicated time. After being satisfied with seeing the process and hearing the story of how the making process was from the beginning, We continued the bike tour to someone who made tempeh, here Coline tried to wrap tempeh with banana leaves. After finishing watching the process of making tempeh we go home to cook together. So that we can have lunch together

Enjoying lunch together

This was Coline’s first experience cooking a traditional Javanese menu. She was very enthusiastic when squeezing coconuts to get the coconut milk, as well as grinding the spices manually. After all the dishes were finished, it was time for us to enjoy lunch together while telling stories about her experiences visiting various places in the world. Coline also wanted to continue the bicycle tour to see the process of making tofu and see people training pigeons.

She was amazed to see pigeons could be trained and registered for competitions. For Coline, this experience will be unforgettable and one day she promised to come back to Yogyakarta. Time flies and it’s time for Coline to return to the hotel. More or less like this is the story of this trip with Coline from France, hopefully it is useful. thank you