Boba Party!

This week's film was The Gleaners and I. Hmm, I really don't have much to say about it. I would say that I enjoyed the film, but that would be a lie. I mean, it was interesting, but the whole thing kinda just tripped me out. I thought the music was hilarious, and I thought that the whole documentary was produced in a really wacky way.

However, there were more eventful things that happened this week for me (food-wise). I have a sister that currently lives and works in San Diego. She has this extreme addiction to boba (not in a bad way). Anyways, she has always talked about trying to make boba for her friends and stuff for fun.

The funny thing is, I actually have experience in making boba and the milk tea that goes along with it. I worked at a cream puff store called 'Beard Papas' a couple of years ago. Although I could talk about my experiences there, and although this would make for a great blog entry, it was much too long ago to discuss. However, I can talk about the boba and milk tea making process. You see, in the 'asian' culture, there is a love for boba milk tea. The milk tea, you could say, is sort of derived from iced coffee. However, it is sort of a mix between tea and coffee. The boba balls are sweet little balls made of 'tapioca' and are placed in the milk tea. It's a very sweet drink overall, but it makes you happy.

At Beard Papa, I had first-hand experience in making this product. The boba was simple. It came in a frozen package and you just put it in a rice cooker for however long and mix it with sugar water. Done.

The tea, however, was a long process. It is very unhealthy too. You start with making black tea (which is healthy). But you destroy the healthiness by adding a whole carton of coffee creamer and tons of sugar water in it. You mix it and ice it.

Anyways, I passed my experience onto my sister at our attempt to make boba at home. I went over to her apartment in SD and told her that this would be a great project to do for my weekly food fix. She invited a few friends over and we started our own little boba shop.

This is our attempt at making our boba seem legitimate. "Cash only" is common within boba shops. We offered both green and standard (black) boba for the milk tea.




This is the boba we made. We bought the frozen packages from 99 Ranch Market, which is a popular Chinese based supermarket. I used the method I used at Beard Papas. They came out a little too chewy, but it was still good.


This is our finished product, and a few shots of people having a good time!!!




Overall, it was a fun experience. It's not something most people can say they've done. However, it really wasn't worth all the hassle. It took a lot of time, and there was a lot of clean-up. I mean, all those cups we had to wash and all the tea we had to make. I probably won't ever do it again to be honest!