It is Javanese culture that celebrate the birthday every thirty five days, for we have 5 sub-identity beside the days. Seven days and 5 wetons makes me celebrate birthdays more frequent. That is not only the point, we also have very specific menu for that occasion, steamed rice served with vegetable salad and shredded coconut spices: Sego Gudangan.
The salad consist of different leaves: spinach, long string bean, cabbage and beans leaves. Combined and mixed with mung bean sprout and shredded coconut spice, it provided rich taste and different texture. The sweet and spicy came from sambal and brown sugar, and the salty taste from the fried anchovy. Having this great taste of vegetables and boiled eggs are very luxurious for me as kid.
In the very end, I just realized that the the banana leaves look just not fully cleaned. I hate to remember that actually I did it all the same during my childhood. It was not only because we are just kids with no such a thing called health awareness, but indeed we have a very poor standard of hygiene.
The funny thing is, long after that I work with the hygiene organization for fresh agriculture products. Meeting several farmers group and encourage them to follow and fulfill the requirement made me broken heart. I did almost give up and I started to pose this question: do we really need that very sophisticated standard?.
The question has left unanswered at the moment. Either it is because it still far away to reach that considerably high standard or I myself just get distracted to something else I think the personal food standard is not necessary to be institutionalized.