a peek inside the fishbowl

My intention was to create a big wooly Easter egg; an AVIAN PINATA of Fine Nesting Materials for our feathered friends. Sadly, it didn’t turn out looking very Eastery or even very egg-shaped. No matter, because the birds have been at it already. See!

Head over to read the whole piece at Canadian Family Magazine. Happy Friday!

Yesterday I wrote about recreating one of our favourite restaurant meals, specifically, a top-notch burger and fries. Today I’m focusing on something a little different: bubble tea. What is bubble tea? Well, it’s a sweet drink of Asian origin. We buy it whenever we’re visiting Somerset and when we go to the doctor’s.

Bubble tea is often fruit flavoured – melon, lychee, coconut, strawberry – but the big draw here is the chewy tapioca “pearls” on bottom of the glass. These are the “bubbles” in bubble tea.

Last time we were at T&T Supermarket I picked up the makings for bubble tea. The ingredients are pretty simple but I had to tinker with this recipe a little bit before posting it here. This is the formula which tasted closest to what you’d get at places like Bubblicity and other local bubble tea shops. We were all really happy with the outcome!

Andrea’s Homemade Bubble Tea Recipe

• 1 cup uncooked tapioca pearls (available in Asian markets) Note! One cup uncooked results in approximately 4 cups of cooked pearls.
• 1/2 cup cold green tea
• 1 1/2 cups cold 2% milk
• OPTION #1: powdered honeydew bubble tea powder (available in Asian markets, and it’s basically powdered milk, natural colouring, and sugar)
• OPTION #2: you can probably make this with fresh honeydew melon instead (very ripe and well-blended!) but I haven’t tried it this way yet. I bet that this version is healthier and it will have less sugar and fewer calories.

First, the pearls. I bought white ones. These are translucent when they’re cooked and taste exactly the same as the black ones we normally see in bubble tea.

Follow the directions on the package:

This particular brand had to be boiled for 20 minutes, left in the pot overnight and boiled a second time for 10 minutes the next day. Then they needed to be soaked a bit longer and rinsed. It seems onerous, but it was no biggie.

Aren’t they pretty?

Please, no comments about how much they look like tiny eyeballs ok?

The eyeballs pearls will keep in the fridge, covered, for about four days.

The rest is very easy. Combine the milk, the tea, and four or five heaping teaspoons of the powder in a blender. Whirl until frothy. Pour into a tall glass over 1/3 cup of the pearls.

This version won’t be as sweet as the ones you get in restaurants, but that’s ok by me. If you do want it sweeter, add a teaspoon of superfine sugar as you’re blending it up.

There you go! Your own bubble tea!

It’s too bad we didn’t have proper straws (pictured here and here) with which to hoover up the pearls. Oh well. We liked it anyway. :)

I’m not a huge meat-eater. The only thing that’s standing between my becoming a vegetarian is bacon. I do however, appreciate a good burger. Especially a well-dressed, good quality (read: non-drive through) hamburger.

Last week’s Ottawa issue of SavvyMom profiled three of our family’s favourite places to get a hamburger and fries. You can read it here!

When the weather is nice I do find myself experiencing burger cravings. Sadly, the budget does not accommodate eating out whenever the craving hits. I’ve been trying to teach the girls that eating at home is less expensive than eating out. And I got to thinking, why not illustrate it by replicating our favourite dinner from The Works?

When we go to The Works it usually looks like this:

• I order a burger. (Each adult burger is about $13.00.)
• Mark orders a burger.
• Emma orders a burger (not from the children’s menu).
• Sarah orders something from the children’s menu.
• Both girls order a small milkshake.
• Mark and I both have a beer.
• We all share a Tower O’ Rings.

This dinner nears $100 once you include taxes and tips. It’s not something we can afford to do very often. So when the craving hit, I went to the grocery store:

I know part of the benefit of eating out is (a) it’s fun to eat out and (b) it’s nice not to have to cook. But this kind of dinner isn’t actually lot of work to prepare.

In addition to this I went to Saslove’s (the local butcher) and bought a package of lean ground beef which cost around $7.00.

My goal was to recreate the “Sexy Burger” (my current favourite from the Works – hence the purchase of pineapple and cream cheese).  Add to that two bottles of beer and the cost of ketchup and mustard (which is negligible) out of our fridge. Mark made himself a regular burger, as did Sarah, and Emma smeared peanut butter on hers (it tastes great!). I made some chunky home fries instead of onion rings, and using the ice cream (along with a bit of Camino cocoa, peanut butter and an overripe banana or two) I made us all some great milkshakes. Dinner was delicious… a real treat!

We had leftover milk, ice-cream, hamburger buns, potatoes, cream cheese AND jalapeño (did you notice it only cost three cents?). That’s the other thing about this experiment – we had groceries we could use another day.

It was an interesting lesson for the girls, not just for the math, but a good life-lesson as well, don’t you think?

Now. What other restaurant dinners can I recreate? :)