The Boba Party

After spending hours making boba and tea, and after having my friends indulge in them, I was finally able to shamelessy flaunt my skillz and delicious tea. My ego did lots of growing tonight. It was great.

And I even have pictures to prove I have friends! Food is the most awesomest way to make friends, and I’m sure anyone who’s cooked for people will know that people love to have friends who make food. Unless those people have had gastric bypass surgery and have no more tastebuds. To that: well…I don’t know what to say.

I apologize to Frances, Johnny, and Carorine for taking turrible pictures. This is why I’m not allowed to take pictures of people.

I think my little tea party tonight was kinda like Foodbuzz’s 24, 24, 24 event, even though I’m not quite sure if I grasp the concept: is it 24 dinners in 24 hours…with 24 friends? If that’s the case, my event would be like a 1, 5, 8 event: me + 5 hours prep + 8(omgimsopopular!) friends. You can tell I don’t read the emails I get from Foodbuzz; I’m probably too busy to do a coordinated event like that. Studying (or procrastinatin) usually takes up most of my time.

Speaking of which: I should be nearing panic mode soon–my cumulative final (7 months of material) is coming up on Friday the 13th (!) of February. During panic mode, I will be cramming as much information about the human pathological condition and medicine as possible into my tiny brain. Or will be updating the blog constantly.

But enough of the digression. I believe I was talking about tea parties. I made batches of Thai Tea, EMW House Special Milk Tea (which uses a mix of Assam and Darjeeling leaves), and Jasmine Green Tea. It’s not the same as what I would normally get at the tea shop, but it makes me appreciate the differences between tea brewed by steeping in hot water and tea brewed using an esspresso machine. The latter definitely creates a more intense flavor and is infinitely easier to use, especially when making iced teas.

Hopefully, I’ve gotten my friends accustomed to better tasting drinks, and they will no longer have a desire to go to Fat Straw. I don’t really have anything against them, but I just like showing people what good tea tastes like. It’s just too bad I won’t be having another tea party for a while. Sucks for them.

Don’t Read This Post On Boba

Before leaving Fresno, I asked my dad if I could bring some tea and boba back to Nashville so I could share some homemade deliciousness with my friends. He sent me back to Tennessee with a five pound bag of boba, six packages to tea leaves (Earl Grey, House Special Black, Jasmine Green, and Thai), a couple pounds of non-dairy creamer, and a strainer. This is enough to last at least two days in the shop, and I have until December 17th to use it all because I don’t want to drag everything back to Fresno–the boba goes bad a month after it’s opened.

However, I won’t talk about how I made boba yesterday. Nope. I didn’t spend an hour slow-cooking boba until it was soft, tender, and bled starchy goodness. I didn’t take the time to explain to my friends that the boba with crunchy innards they were eating from other bobaries in Nashville were stale because shops are too cheap/lazy to make fresh batches daily, or simply because they used instant crap. I didn’t brew a batch of House Special and Earl Grey yesterday, and I didn’t receive grandiose fanfare for spectacular milk tea. And most of all, I didn’t tell people that my black market boba tea shop would be churning out more batches before Christmas.

So since I didn’t do any of that, the Nashville Department of Public Health has no reason tracking down my underground boba operation to shutdown my medical school backup plan. There’s absolutely no shady business going on at all.