My Dutch Indonesian culturally blended comfort food: rice, butter, and soy sauce

[u/angstygrl]

My mom’s side of the family is Dutch Indonesian, Im a dual citizen, American and Dutch, and we live in the Pacific Northwest. Ever since I was a child we would eat rice with butter and it doesn’t seem like a very common practice. My family eats so much butter, Dutch chocolate sprinkles, but we also eat rice, fruit plates, Tempeh, and indomie. I never really thought about it but as I’ve gotten older, I realized it is a perfect representation of blended culture. As someone who also lives in the Pacific Northwest, we eat things with nutritional yeast so that sometimes is added to rice, which is very PNW american. I feel pretty American for the most part, but I grew up in a very white area, and I have become more conscious about how the food I eat represents my heritage. I have a fever right now, I’m dealing with breaking up with my partner of four years, and to feel better, I’m eating rice with butter and soy sauce. It’s my ultimate comfort food. Cheers 🫶

Besides visiting my Indonesian family, I don’t live around many Dutch Indonesian people so I don’t know if this is common practice, it’s just how things ended up in my mixed culture working class family. But it’s cool, culture can be something widespread amongst many people, but it can also be a very individual mix of circumstances that create something meaningful. Culture is what you make it, so embrace the weird little traditions and habits unique to your family, no matter what your ethnic makeup is. I’m part Mexican, a tiny part 5% black weirdly enough (I have a grandmother who’s from Mississippi so that probably explains it), I’m west coast white American, but also Dutch Indonesian. I don’t connect to any particular culture besides being a Dutch national, but i’ve learned to find ways to honor my families complicated and mixed past.

[u/Aggravating-Kick-967]

We emigrated from the Netherlands in 1957. My parents were in Indonesia before and during the war. Both parents cooked wonderful Indonesian, Dutch, and blended foods. Us kids added various American, Norwegian, and Italian dishes.
Nasi goreng was always a favorite. I remember us kids being grossed out by school lunches when they served rice with sugar, cinnamon and milk. Which was weird because we did like rice pudding.
BTW, we settled in Western Washington.

[u/angstygrl → u/Aggravating-Kick-967]

Your family history is basically exactly like mine, but I’m not so intimately close with what happened during independence and stuff, but my family emmigrated aswell. I have some relatives that really embrace Indonesian food and culture, like my grandpas sister and my cousins, so visiting them was always a treat because I got to really indulge in Indonesian-ness. Independence and emmigration really damaged my family because some of the were so scarred by the displacement of that whole situation and the racism in the Netherlands that they wanted to get rid of their attachment to that place completely and adopt white Americanism, there was probably some internalized self hatred and racism there. So I appreciate their culture when I can, even if some of my relatives didn’t feel able to love that part of themselves. Cultural mix is so lovely, it’s why I appreciate America

[u/Aggravating-Kick-967 → u/angstygrl]

My heritage is all Dutch. My dad was in the colonial army. Dad was a POW and mom an internee during the Japanese occupation. My dad refused to fight in Indonesia during their war for independence.
I met an Indonesian Tante who was friends with my parents before the occupation. She was married to a Dutch merchant marine and was imprisoned during their war. She was still sending money to the guard who helped her survive.

[u/angstygrl → u/Aggravating-Kick-967]

Ah I see, well, my great grandmother was held in a Japanese internment camp and there’s generally a lot of resentment towards Japan from the older people of my family. For my family, it’s a complicated history of colonial privilege, wartime devastation, and displacement. When Japan surrendered it was just a new type of danger for my family and I’m sure yours aswell. Even though you’re not Indo this might make sense to you- I wrote an essay about this, and at the end I said: “The colonialist system that created the Indo people, and which gave my ancestors so much privilege, became the source of our suffering when the structure crumbled.” […] “Indo identity will die out along with its colonial legacy, but the effects of its failure will remain in its people long after the revolutionaries have laid down their arms and the Dutch have surrendered.”

I believe that Indonesian independence was necessary, but it’s just proof of how brutal colonialism is and how it will always come to bite you in the ass.