Of the making of Indonesian snacks there is no end...

At a conference recently, we were served a wonderful thing called semar mendem. My Google efforts seem to indicate there are two similar snacks, and what we had seems to have been a melange of both: sticky rice surrounding a chicken mixture (as here), then wrapped up in what everyone calls an omelette, but seemed more like a pancake to me, and then clipped in an arrangement of bamboo sticks to keep the package together. Anyway, it is apparently a Yogya speciality, and it was both delicious and filling.

The shop by the market serves up a variety of jajanan. New ones recently sampled have included ketan bubuk (a mixture of sticky rice and coconut, with brown sugar on top) and one called lopes (short, I think, for kuih lopes pulut), which consists of tiny rice-flour cakes, coated in coconut, and served with liquid brown sugar.

To launch us into the second half-semester, we had lunch at the swish and extensive Bebek Plengkung, not far from us just off Jl Parangtritis. It has the rice-field situation that seems obligatory for this level of restaurant, and it is definitely not cheap... But the Peking Duck is absolutely delicious. It comes with rice, sambal, and hoisin sauce, and we added a plate of urap Bali (a spicy salad made of green beans, bean sprouts, peanuts, and chilies). All Very Nice.

Of course, you try not to associate what's on your plate with the friendly patter of the little guys' feet as they hack down the road every morning...

And it's mango season! They're fair dripping off the trees. The other day, on our morning walk, a few ladies were picking mangoes, deftly manipulating a really long pole with a little basket arrangement at the top. Definitely looked like the kind of thing I'd be terrible at... So I limit my mango activities to ordering mango juice or mango lassi at every available opportunity. The colour alone lifts the spirits. Savour the season...