What's for dinner? Seriously...

I think I ask myself this question almost every single night. The meat in Sentani is mainly chicken, beef, fish, tofu, and more chicken. Our dinners are mainly chicken and rice, and when we tire of that we switch it around to rice and chicken. :)Not really, but sometimes it feels like that. We eat pasta, Mexican food, and pizza too. Tonight I went through a "drive thru" (insert imagination here). It was almost like KFC or Churches Chicken.

This is called a "Kaki Lima" (Kah-Key Lee-Mah). It literally means "5 Legs".



Vendors will push the cart around town selling their goodies. If you count the legs when the cart is stopped, you'll count five legs including the two legs of the vendor. This car is stationary, so it might be missing a few legs... The guys in the back are the vendors. They have a huge vat of oil which is used to fry the chicken. They then set the chicken in the window and sell it to people that walk up to buy it. Fried chicken (ayam goreng "eye-yam gore-ang (like angle)") is a popular dish.



We have to be very careful with the foods we eat if it isn't cooked in our home. Fruits and veggies have to be washed and dried very carefully, killing all of the harmful bacteria that can make us very sick (in both directions... if you know what I mean, either way not pretty). A good rule of thumb that we use is- if it's freshly fried, it's just right. So buying food from a kaki lima can be harmless if the food has recently been fried. This kaki lima offers fried chicken that is freshly fried around 5:30. The price is only 7,000 rupiah (roo-pia or rupes if you're local), that is about $0.81. What a bargain!

So ayam goreng, that's what's for dinner