Beautiful Bali

View of Mount Kinabalu in the distance from our dive boat in Kota Kinabalu

(This is a post that Laura wrote up after we visited Bali, but we didn't end up posting it because I went snorkeling with our non-waterproof-camera in my pocket.  After several tries, I was luckily able to recover all of our pictures!)

Album of all bali photos

Laura -- After leaving the jungle, we headed back to Kota Kinabalu for 3 fun days of diving. We'll post more about the diving once we get home and can easily see the videos and photos.

We caught a flight from there to Bali, Indonesia and headed straight to Ubud for about five days. The first place we stayed was right beside the Monkey Forest. So naturally, we spent an afternoon there. The monkeys seemed to particularly enjoy climbing on Jerome. There were all sizes and personalities and we spent several hours watching them.  Here's a couple of them:

More monkey videos in my YouTube playlist.

The next day we took a cooking class at Paon Bali. It began with a market visit where we learned about and tasted the different fruits from the area, such as mangosteens (our favorite) and salak. Then we were put to work - slicing, dicing, and grinding ingredients. Puspa the head chef led us in cooking nine traditional dishes! If you're curious, here's an online copy of the recipes. At the end we got to eat our spoils, and it was a very tasty feast!

Market selling the ingredients to prepare the traditional balinese offerings that are put out every day.

Mangosteens - our delicious!  Our favorite 'exotic' fruit.

Salak (aka snake fruit).  Kind of dry and apple-y

Laura, crushing the ingredients to make the basic yellow sauce

Jerome, crushing peanuts to make peanut sauce

Our finished meal

The following day we continued expanding our knowledge, by taking a Batik making class. We arrived at 10am, and didn't finish until 6! We started off by drawing our design on paper. Coming up with the ideas of what to draw was quite a challenge itself. Once we were happy, we transferred it onto an 18" by 36" piece of cotton, also in pencil. Then came the tricky part. You use a special little device that holds wax and lets you draw on the fabric. There's quite a knack to it. If you have too much wax or tip it up too much it leaves a big drip on your picture . If you have too little, it won't write. And if you tip it down too much, it drips boiling wax on your hand! Needless to saw we each had a few drips, but overall did pretty well. Next we used metal stamps in hot wax to make geometric patterns along the border. Once the whole piece was outlined in wax, it was time to paint in the dye. It is a bit like a colouring book picture, except where the wax is now will be left white at the end.

Tracing the outline with wax

Laura adding a border to her batik

Laura's batik - Finished with the wax and ready to color

Jerome's batik - finished with the wax and ready to color

Choosing colours was interesting. There were about 15 colours to choose from, but they didn't all paint on with the colour they'd be in the end. So the pictures looked weird. For example the green dye paints on a dark purple, and then in the chemical setting process turns green. And the reds painted on very faint, but deepened with sun and water exposure. There was a colour wheel to use to figure out what the colours should end up like.

It took a long time but we eventually covered the whole cloth. They had to dry and then were ready for the magic. It was so neat putting them in the setting bath and seeing all the colours change! A few rinses in hot and cold water, and we were done! A very fun and productive day.

Laura's completed batik 

Jerome's batik before setting

Jerome's batik after setting -- note the color changes!

The next day, we were scheduled to go diving, and were up and ready to go by 6:30, only to find out it was canceled. We went back to sleep intending on only sleeping for an hour or so, but didn't wake up until the afternoon. So we explored the main street. Very interesting as every shop, house, car, moped has a small offering on it to the spirits. It was also only a few days before Galungan day - a biannual holiday to give thanks to the gods. So everyone was busy making decorations and more complicated offerings for that along the road. After dinner we attended a traditional Kecak and fire dance which was quite impressive. A large circle of men perform a rhythmic chant while dancers act out the story of the Ramayana.

Our last day in Ubud was a bit of a splurge. We'd found this hotel, the Royal Kamuela Villa, with these beautiful villas and decided to stay for one night. We had a private pool, a king sized bed, a bathroom the size of the bedroom. It included afternoon tea, bedtime chocolates and a welcome foot massage. It was heavenly!

That night we also decided to go fancy for dinner and tried Locavore, which had really great food!

Best dish was this bloody mary sorbet with tomato consomme.  Warm soup, cold bloody mary sorbet, super flavorful.

Slow braised oxtail / pan-fried gnocchis / green asparagus & sorrel veloute / egg plant puree / wood sorrel leaves

That wrapped up our time in Ubud, and we reluctantly tore ourselves out of our pool and headed to Amed - on the east coast of Bali. We did a quick stop at a water temple on the way.

In Amed we stayed in a very cute, very efficiently run guesthouse called Geria Geri Shanti. It was also a dive shop, and we spent 5 days there, completing 12 dives, including our first night dives which was very interesting.  Other highlights included diving with huge Manta rays and seeing our first Pygmy seahorses!

There's a lot more pictures in our album!

Pizza Nights!

This recipe makes great pizza dough and is super easy! I've made it both by hand kneading and with our stand mixer, and its worth it either way (albeit faster with the mixer)! The original recipe is from Crazy Plates by Janet & Greta Podleski but we've done some tweaking over the years. It's one of our favourites, and though it requires a little bit of pre-planning it gives a lot of options. The recipes are collected from many of our pizza nights, hence them magically going from only a bit whole wheat to totally and back again!

You'll need:
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (aka 1 package if you roll that way)
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp honey - I just estimate since its too messy to measure
1 tsp salt
2-2.5 cups flour
(minimum 1/2 cup whole wheat, but we've done it
almost all whole wheat - just add some extra water)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil - again I just estimate to save on dishes!


Start by mixing the honey into the warm water, and then put the yeast in and let it sit for a few minutes to get frothy - like in the handy dandy picture! Then add the salt and olive oil.


Next add 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and of the regular flour, and start mixing.
Add another cup of flour and keep mixing - that's usually enough for us. But, use some more if it's too sticky. Then knead it until its smooth and elastic-y.


Spray the bowl with some non stick spray and cover it and leave it alone somewhere warm and non-breezy for at least an hour. I try and make the dough in the morning before work, so it's ready for us when we get home.


Later on it should look like this!!


The cool thing about this recipe, is that it can make 2 thinner crust pizzas, or 1 thicker crust pizzas, depending on what you feel like, or how many toppings you have on hand. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Punch the dough down and form your pizzas and put them on sprayed pans. Add your toppings. And bake for 10-15 minutes depending on your oven, rotating them if you have two.

Here are some of the combos we've done recently:

Pasta sauce, cheddar cheese, jalepenos, tomatoes.

Buffalo sauce, bacon, green peppers, jalepenos, cheddar, cilantro 

Pesto sauce, chicken, caramelized onions and feta

Pasta sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, cheddar salami

Some other things we've tried: Bbq sauce, salsa as sauce, taco meat, chorizo, capers, fresh mozerella and even making our own stuffed crust! Let us know what you try out! 

Homemade Pesto

Last weekend we went to one of the local farmer's markets to see what was going on. There were alot of strawberries and some citrus as well as winter stuff like potatoes and leeks. We found a stall that had these really lovely bunches of freshly picked organic basil. And at $2, we decided to get a bunch and try making some pesto!


Here is what we used
2 cups fresh basil
1/4-1/2 cup slivered almonds
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2ish cup of olive oil


We added the oil and lemon juice to the garlic and pine nuts, then blend/cusinart it until it's not as lumpy. then add in the basil leaves and mix, and finally the parmesan. You probably could do it all in one go, but we did it in steps.

It was very nice, some little crunchy bits and the flavour of the fresh basil was awesome. We ate it all week in wraps and on pasta. You can freeze it, but you're supposed to leave the cheese out in that case.

Chocolate Mousse!

A few weeks ago our good friends Ann and Eugene came to visit us. We decided it was a good occasion for a feast, and decided to make Beef Wellington as it had been a while! However since we've posted making it twice already. We decided to also try Chocolate Mousse and talk about that instead!


Here we are about to enjoy our Beef Wellington! After that we were having too much fun, and so I forgot to take any more pictures unfortunately...

For the Mousse we based it off of an Alton Brown Recipe.

You start with some chocolate chips (12oz)

Then you add 3oz of Espresso

Then you add a splash of rum!

Then make a double boiler and melt it together along with 4 tbsp of butter

Stop  as soon as it's all melty, and let it cool down.

Meanwhile, you need to add 1/4 cup of whipping cream to a teaspoon of gelatin and let it sit for 10 minutes. Kind of like proofing yeast. Once the chocolate mixture is cool, stir these together.

Then whip up 1.5 cups of whipping cream until it has peaks. 

Then fold it into the chocolate mixture carefully so it stays light and fluffy. 

We thought it'd be fun to make in individual cups and had these neat ones we got in Italy on our honeymoon that were just the right size for a serving. 

We topped them off with blackberries and we all enjoyed it thoroughly.

The one thing we'd change next time is to put less coffee in it. We weren't sure if we'd over done it, or if it was supposed to be like that, but it was definitely more chocolate coffee mousse than chocolate. But otherwise, the texture was really nice, and it set well and everything. It was quite easy and quick, and I'm definitely interesting it making it again!  It was a nice end to our tasty dinner and our evening of fun and friends!!