Make your own Bubble Tea!

After a trek to two different Asian grocery stores, we came home to make our very own bubble tea! Mane was pining after some good bubble tea after standing out in the hot sun this morning. She's a particular fan of mango smoothies with lychees jellies and tapioca pearls. I'm not a fan of spending $4 for a beverage at the bubble tea place. So, we set out to have a cultural cooking experience and make our own!

Our first stop was Shuang Hur Oriental Market on Nicollet Avenue. (This is where we bought banana leaves to wrap the lembas for Mane's Lord of the Rings birthday party.) We found lychee jellies at Shuang Hur. Here's Mane dropping them in mango orange juice (not quite a mango smoothie, but still very yummy):

Clearly, we have enough lychee jellies to last us for quite some time! We could not find tapioca pearls at Shuang Hur, though. So, we headed over to United Noodles, right off Franklin and Cedar. There we found, not only tapioca pearls, but also a giant assortment of tea, Chinese herbs, sauce, rice noodles, incense, curry, etc, etc, etc... We came home with rice wine for marinading chicken, bok choy, ginger, and snap peas. Mango is planning to do some cooking tomorrow!

Multi-Colored Tapioca Pearls!

We are looking forward to visiting United Noodles again very soon! Shuang Hur was smaller and had a meat market that didn't smell so great. They are still totally the place to go if you need banana leaves or if you want to see a live lobster. But for a bigger, cleaner store, we recommend United Noodles, which smelled a lot like black licorice...