Prologue | A Revelation

Food is indeed my first ever true love in my life because food will never disappoint me or anyone in general. My love for food leads me to gain a huge interest in anything involving food. From being always excited whenever I go for grocery shopping with my Mum and pretend that the whole food aisles in the supermarket is my personal pantry, to always getting up early every Saturday morning to watch Mrs. Sisca Soewitomo’s cooking show and Iron Chef in the local channel television while eating my breakfast. At the age of 9, I’m basically a self-proclaimed foodie at heart. My love for food has actually evolved in a quite short period of time: from only liking to eat it, liking to see people create it, to liking to create it by myself, especially because I love to watch cooking shows and see all of those chefs around the world turn raw ingredient into amazing dishes. As a child who lived in East Kalimantan, my main and only entertainment was watching television. Especially back during those days, Internet and socializing with my friends through social media was not common yet. After coming back from school, I was all by myself and to kill time, my routine or in other words, my best friend at home was Asian Food Channel. Literally.

I still remember every time I got home after school since the 5th grade, I put my backpack in my room, came back to the living room, and watched cooking shows while still wearing my school uniform. After that, I tried to remake the dishes that I watched earlier using ingredients available in my fridge and also made my Mum mad because I hadn’t showered until 7 PM because of all of that. When I tried to recreate all of those amazing dishes, most of the time I only used local vegetables as the main ingredients, because those were the ingredients available in my fridge. If I wanted to use chicken or meat, I needed to defrost it first and I was an impatient little child. Therefore, I got used to cooking local vegetables, and found a way to turn them into something that I personally like based on what I just watched earlier that very day. I always perceive local vegetable as a raw ingredient with unlimited possibilities because each vegetable has their own characteristics with their own amazing flavor. When I was a child, the reason why I preferred to use local vegetable as my main ingredient was relatively trivial. Nevertheless, in reality, all of the chefs that I watched on television were always emphasizing on always using local ingredients and seasonal vegetables and make the best out of them which as I grew up, I learned how that tip would cause many major impacts.

It is not a secret anymore that the majority of Indonesians prefer anything labelled as imported goods. From clothes to even vegetables and fruit, imported products are generally perceived to be of better quality. However, I cannot really blatantly blame them because perhaps, the way our local agricultural and horticultural products are being positioned in the market has made them think that way. Balakosa wants to reinvent how people shop and consume local agricultural and horticultural product in order to change all of that misconception towards our local product.

Chef around the world are always proud to use local products as their must-have ingredients because they are not just fresher and pure, but it is also one of the ways to contribute to the society by empowering local farmers and giving them a chance to own a better way of life. Therefore, buying, consuming, and cultivating local products are more than the activities themselves. They include the personal duty as being the part of the society.

To put my inspiration behind the creation of Balakosa in one conclusion statement: all I want is all Indonesians or even the whole world to see Indonesia's local agricultural and horticultural product as a valuable commodity. At least, as simple as a young girl who loves to cook local vegetables because it is faster than defrosting a frozen block of meat, or because each pound of vegetables that you purchase will empower other people and fulfill your purest inner pleasure. Balakosa is a manifestation of my very own dreams, which is to make people see Indonesia's local agricultural and horticultural products through my own lens.