Badeg Ice Banyumas, Thirst-Quenching Drink
Living in the tropics makes us often feel hot, especially during the day while doing activities outside. Drinking fresh and cold drinks is certainly a thirst-quenching choice. Many typical traditional beverages are no less refreshing than contemporary with well-known brands. Badeg Ice, a traditional Banyumas drink, for example.
Badeg comes from coconut flowers (Javanesse: manggar). Getting manggar is not easy since you should climb a coconut tree first, install a container to hold the sap water, and collect it the next day when the water is full. Since the process is hard, thus, only a few people make badeg ice.
At present, badeg ice still exists, although rare. Badeg ice sellers sell it uniquely. Usually, the place for the badeg container made of long bamboo. If you've ever seen an action movie like Wiro Sableng, there's a scene where a warrior character takes a drink from a long bamboo stick. Well, bamboo-like is usually used for badeg containers. In the past, the bamboo was usually tied at the back of the bicycle and the seller rode around on the bicycle. Now it's rare for badeg sellers to use bamboo and ride around on bicycles.
The bamboo container for holding the badeg is called pongkor. Badeg is not sold per piece but per glass. Because one pongkor is too much, it can be used for several glasses. A glass of badeg with added ice cubes is usually priced very cheaply, from 3,000 to 5,000 rupiah.
The color of this badeg ice is similar to coconut water. It tastes like coconut water, but it is sweeter and fresh. It looks more like legen water, sap water from siwalan trees, which is usually found in Jogjakarta or eastern Java.
Badeg ice sellers usually also sell cimplung, traditional snacks. Cimplung is a snack made from cassava boiled with palm sugar. The taste is sweet, tender, and delicious to eat when it's still warm. Usually, villagers serve cimplung to guests. Es badeg and cimplung are the perfect combinations. The price is also cheap.
Even though only a few sellers of cimplung and badeg ice, these two traditional culinary still exist. Nowadays, several restaurants or cafes have started selling traditional culinary, including badeg and cimplung. If you go around Banyumas, don't forget to try it. (Kasih/Contributor)
