bubble tea.

it all started when our thai classmate pointed out that there was a bubble tea place near our school in padova. i had no idea about what exactly a bubble tea was, but shruti was quite excited. she had tried the authentic bubble tea in singapore over the summer, and so we decided to visit this bubble tea place to see how it was.

the bubble tea shop was pretty small with random stuff placed in some glass cabinets. the inside of the shop was very colorful with pink and green decorations. but that's not our subject, shruti.

so, focusing back on the bubble tea.

bubble tea is a flavored tea specialty with added tapioca pearls to give a chewy effect. the tea is shaken before serving so that it forms some foam, and served with a big, wide straw.

apparently this version of the bubble tea included huge pearls filled with weird juice instead of the chewy tapioca. dissatisfied with this, we have decided to make our own bubble tea flavored with raspberry, which coincided with our desire to put off studying for a final exam. it is interesting that whenever we have an exam, we get the sudden urge to cook exotic and lavish meals for hours. talk about procrastination. 555.

so we visited the local organic shop to get tapioca that i had seen earlier and white tea. what we had in mind was to mix white tea with crushed raspberry to make raspberry tea, and then to add the tapioca pearls to give it the bubble tea texture. problem was, the only tapioca pearls available were the small white ones that are typically used for tapioca pudding. we bought the pearls anyway, because making that raspberry bubble tea became an obsession in a matter of hours.

how did we make it:
- we put 4-5 tea bags in boiled water in a pot and let it sit for a while, until it cooled down.
- we crushed fresh raspberries and added a little sugar to make a syrup
- we added the syrup to the cooled tea, then filtered out the raspberry flesh and seeds and placed in the fridge.
- we placed the tapioca pearls in boiling water, we removed the pot from the stove when it started boiling again, then we waited for the pearls to form.
- we added the tapioca pearls to the raspberry tea and served ourselves some bubble tea. oh yeah.

food trip... not.

hi there.

so shruti and i were in bologna one weekend in the past month. our goal for the trip was to have lasagna and tiramisu, then come back to padova - boy, were we naive.

getting to bologna wasn't hard, it was only 40 minutes away by train. finding a restaurant to have a dinner, on the contrary, was impossible. we didn't have a really heavy lunch because we wanted to save room in our bellies. yeah. bellies. al sangiovese was our first target on the list we got from the nice lady at the information center. we called the restaurant but no one answered so we walked all the way to the other end of the city only to find that it was closed, located in a creepy neighborhood and not even served food worthy of our tasting. having dreamed of this place all day, we returned to city center in despair, then started walking around in hopes of finding a decent restaurant to have decent lasagna bolognese.

boy, were we naive.

we found two trattorias. none of them wanted us. apparently to eat in bologna you have to reserve days before your arrival to guarantee proper food. so finally with our hopes of a good meal shattered and completely drenched from the thunderstorm that we were caught in, we walked to a local bar and sat in the cold with wet clothes to have our crappy lasagna.

it was a sad day. no one should feel that sad and hungry and wet. this, however was not the worst part of the day. fucking train conductors decided to strike right at the hour our return ticket was issued, so we had to pay 50 euros extra to take a different train to return to padova. to kill our time, we decided to try the italian mcdonalds to see if they had tiramisu, because we had been looking for tiramisu the whole night with no luck. bologna was out of tiramisu. you would think that in italy, even the mcdonalds would have authentic tiramisu.

boy, were we naive.

what we got was tiramisu topped and filled with dried fig, pineapple and raisins. having been disappointed too many times, shruti performed some kind of abortion on the tiramisu to get at least one thing her way. here's the proof:

so, that was our food trip that didn't really happen.

Top Ten Comfort Foods!

For warming up we decided to list our top ten favorite comfort foods as of October 2012. These are subject to change depending on mood, season, hormones, clothes size and demographics.

Numero Dix - Meggi Noodles

Numero Neuf - Pizza Margharita

Numero Huit - Creme Brulee

Numero Sept - Gelato

Numero Six - Cream of mushroom soup

Numero Cinq - Baked potato

Numero Quatre - Nutella straight out of the jar

Numero Trois - Lasagne Bolognese 

Numero Deux - Tiramisu

Numero Un - CHILI

So what's on your top ten list?

HI

What do you get when two internet obsessed foodies living in Italy come together? Well...THIS! A blog about what we eat, where we eat and how we eat.

Hope you enjoy our journey and our gluttonic relationship with food!