Farm to table

As usual, we were late, despite extra measures we put in(like an earlier alarm).  Luckily, we wound up being the first to arrive!!

We booked ourselves a cooking class on an organic farm in a village nearby Ubud. It was us and a Dutch family.

It began with a hotel pick up, which we were only 5 minutes late too!  The road was rather bumpy at the end, having lost the pavement!  Once we pulled up we waited a bit for the others to join.

Kadek(which means second born), our host, took us around the garden first, then to a few different areas of the area. They all seemed to be different farms, but operated as a collective. We got sour mandarins, green lemons, cassava, bok choy, payapa, cucumber etc.  We then went to the actual organic farm and picked a few more garden type items like turmeric, basil and ginger and set about to cook. 

Some of the stuff had already been cooking(like the rice) and we used an outdoor kitchen with a few pots, ovens over open flame to get everything going.  We did cursory tasks like smashing together spices and putting the meat on the coconut sticks for satay. We wrapped tofu in banana leaves and Joe manned the fryer for the corn fritters. Before we knew it the food was ready and we had several dishes; soup, mixed vegetable, corn fritters, satay all with the same spice mix!!

We left and decided on a nap, then a dip in the pool!  This put off our trip to the market. And by the time we finally took the shuttle and got to town we were just too late. But, the shopping in general, especially for a shelf item, has not been as fun or exciting as it has been in other places. People hawk, so unless you love something on first site, you don't want to stick around. You don't know what is real and what is not. And also, in general, a larger girl shopping in asian countries for clothes is never ever a fun thing.

We got bored with shopping and had dinner in a second floor open air restaurant. Since we could not have gotten more Indonesian in our lunch, we decided we could go western in our dinner; cur the creamy spaggetti!!  We then stopped by a few yo place before heading back to our hotel!!