make Taiwanese boba/bubble tea with your kids:)

Bubble tea is so popular with teens and others around here -- Montgomery County, Maryland, which has a sizeable Asian population -- that many stores offer it, in all sorts of flavors, from traditional ones like lychee to modern variations like coffee and a whole variety of fruits. And some offer it with little jelly squares instead of the tapioca bubbles. The really authentic bubble tea places offer to make it with different kinds of milk tea, or as smoothies. Others buy a packaged mix that isn't very good. My daughter, age 16 (adopted from Xiamen, Fujian province, China at 18.5 months), is something of a connoisseur of bubble tea, and won't buy it in certain stores in our area, because she says that it isn't the real thing. My daughter's IB program is heavily Asian, and the kids often go out at lunch -- it's an open campus -- for bubble tea. Sometimes, they even have it with their pizza! And when we order Chinese or Thai food at home, we often order bubble tea with it. Oh, and by the way, so you don't start an international incident. While you may think that the Taiwanese invented bubble tea, there are a lot of people in China, and particularly Hong Kong, who are pretty convinced that it was started there! Sharon

Oh no:)- I don't want to start any bubble tea conflicts:). There are already enough conflicts in the world! hahahaI love how it is so popular! We live in a heavily Asian community (outside Houston) and it is very popular here as well. I can't wait to serve it to my kids' friends this summer:).