Bali Trip: Cooking up a feast and fabric

We had a choice between a Balinese Spa Day or a Balinese Cooking Class so my mom and I chose the cooking class.  We started off at a traditional market and walked around where the locals shopped. It was interesting to experience the sights and smells of the traditional market compared to the ones in more touristy areas.
Balinese fruit stand 
Offerings for sale
beautiful colours of flowers for the offerings
Then the teacher took us to her family's compound where she handed out recipes and walked us through a feast of delicious food.  We first made a a base curry sauce that we ended up using in most dishes.  It had so many different flavours, some familiar to us and some new.  We chopped, ground, sautéed, and soon we were enjoying a delicious feast for lunch.  The cooking class was a great way to try some local dishes that we wouldn't have necessarily tried in a restaurant.

how to ground chicken Bali style
Hard at work chopping
The group ready to enjoy our feast
Our wonderful teacher and chef
We had some free time in the afternoon, so we headed  back to Denpasar to stock up on more fabric.  We had to make sure we filled up our luggage allowance!

  The following day we went to one of the Hoffman batik factories.  Hoffman is a very popular brand of fabric known for its quality and beauty, so it was really neat to see the fields where it all happened.  The workers there were so friendly and treated us like celebrities.  After watching how quickly they scrunch up the fabric and squirt it with dye, they took a break to take a group picture with us.  
Group picture with the workers
Listening to an explanation of the process
The batik fields
Laying out fabric to dry
Adding the first layer of dye (with a water bottle!)
Scrunching up the fabric
Dyeing a roll of fabric
Quality control - they cut a small piece of each roll to keep in their library in case there are issues later
Making swatch cards
After our morning at the factory we had a very relaxing lunch at the beach, though I think by this point we were all getting a bit tired of eating egg rolls, rice, and noodles!
enjoying the water





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