It’s been a pretty quiet week/weekend. Scott’s been working on a puzzle and I’ve been reading and cooking and watching Olympics.

Have you noticed that there is almost never lemon or lemonade flavoured bubble tea available? Well since lemonade is pretty much my favourite beverage OF ALL TIME, I decided to go about making lemonade bubble tea at home. With pearls, of course.

The recipe takes a while, but none of the steps are complicated.

1. That’s not my picture but that is the exact kind of pearls I bought from T&T. The bag was something like $2 and has enough pearls for about 6 generous servings. They come dried.

2. Boil a big pot of water (the pearls need lots of space to move around). When the water is boiling, dump in some pearls. Stir them immediately if they are sticking to the bottom of the pot.

1 serving of cooked pearls is ~1/4 cup dried pearls

3. When the pearls float up to the top, reduce the heat to medium and let the pearls and water simmer for about 20 minutes.

4. At the same time you can prepare your sugar syrup. I use a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water (disgusting, I know). I use half brown sugar and half white sugar but I don’t think it matters what you choose. Simmer that on the stove until the sugar is totally dissolved.

5. Put the sugar syrup into a container and use a slotted spoon to get all of your pearls out of the boiling water. Put the pearls in the syrup and let it soak in there on the counter for at least 15 minutes.

6. The pearls are ready to be eaten! If you have extra pearls you can store them in the syrup in the fridge, but they will definitely need to be heated up again before you can eat them because they turn rock hard again when they are cold. The pearls are nice and chewy when they are still slightly warm.


My gross looking homemade lemonade bubble tea. Looks yuck but tastes YUM.

On Saturday I made Thai green papaya salad with shrimp for dinner. One of my new favourite recipes ever!! I made it a bit too spicy though… next time I will definitely put less red chili. Underneath all the heat though it tasted fantastic, and it’s nice and healthy!

After dinner we met up with Zsofi downtown for more fireworks.

The show was from Italy. It was good!! Definitely better than Vietnam the week before, although we heard that Brazil’s show on Wednesday was the best. Shame we missed it. Scott even won tickets to sit in the bleachers for that show but we ended up selling them for $50 because I can’t stay up that late on a weeknight.

I give Italy +10 points for those cool fireworks that looked like arrows going upwards that I had never seen before, but also -10 points for putting off those lame-o smiley face fireworks that I HATE.

Also the smoke from the fireworks was really thick and sometimes it blocked out a lot of the fireworks (like in the above picture). I don’t think that is really their fault though, I guess it just wasn’t breezy out.

We had a really nice day in White Rock yesterday. It took us over an hour to get there by public transit but once we were there it felt like we were on a mini vacation. It was warm and sunny and quiet and so nice. It didn’t feel like we were in Vancouver at all.

We read our Kindles in the shade, waded around in the water, listened to live music, ate fries and drank cider, and just relaxed. It was a really good day.

Occasionally the train rolls through White Rock.

Me in the pub.

Mount Ranier?

First day of August = time to review my progress on my summer goals again.

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade). twice (strawberry frozen yogurt).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver. done!
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE.
  5. Watch fireworks. done.
  6. Finish my Settlers paintings.
  7. Sell a pair of shoes or a shirt or a painting.
  8. Go to one of the night markets in Richmond. donetwice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once. twice. does that count as ‘regularly’? not sure.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. Insurgent (Veronica Roth), Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (Jenny Lawson), currently reading The Art of Fielding: A Novel (Chad Harbach). I <3 you Kindle.
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board. done!
  12. Find a new person to play board games with.
  13. Try a new fruit.
  14. Do a successful venipuncture on a real patient. I’ve done about 60 now.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures. definitely failing at this so far.

Getting there!

I’m totally looking forward to this upcoming long weekend, and 9 AM start time at work for the next two weeks. Two more days of early mornings and busy days giving injections.

We’ve been asked for our top three choices for hospital placements for the fall and winter terms (we alternate two weeks at the hospital and two weeks of classes for all of second year). So many factors to consider… commuting, convenience, hours, friends, educational experience, potential jobs, etc etc. I’ll let you know when I finalize my choices.

We went to watch the Celebration of Light fireworks with Zsofi and Dylan last night. We got a great spot and had a little picnic with lots of fruit and cheese. It was a good show.

Don’t you think fireworks should have advanced further than they have by now? Everything else in the world is getting faster, cooler, fancier, yet the most complex firework they have is still that dumb smiley face one. Yeesh. I think they should be able to spell out words or make pictures by now!! I hope by the time I die I will have seem them recreate Starry Night in firework form.

Some other stuff I haven’t shown you yet!

Chocolate hazelnut tart from Death By Chocolate that Scott and I split the other night. Reminded me of the hazelnut pie I made a couple years ago. (I never made it again because just the hazelnuts cost me like $10!!)

Crepes of Wrath’s Simple Salmon Tartar. Totally delicious. I already want to eat this again.

Well I declared today CRAFT DAY so I’d better get off the computer and do something DIY.