food and family

Did I mention that I made tapioca pudding yesteday from scratch? Well I did, I even made it strawberry flavored using my strawberry puree. I soaked the tapioca pearls overnight and made the pudding while Giselle did school yesterday. Until Giselle got a fever this evening, I was sure that her stomach ache was from eating too much tapioca pudding yesterday.
I just followed the recipe on the back of the package of Reese Small Pearl Tapioca:
1/2 C Reese Tapioca
2 1/2 C milk
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C sugar
2 eggs separated
1 tsp vanilla
In a bowl, soak tapioca in 2 cups of room temperature water overnight. Drain water. (By the way, the balls taste fairly nasty at this point.) In a double boiler (I just used a large sauce pan directly on the stove), heat milk just until no longer cold. Add salt and tapioca. continue heating until small bubbles appear at sides of pan. Cover, turn heat to very low and cook for one hour. Make sure that milk mixture does not simmer or boil. Separate egg whites from yolks. Beat egg yolks and sugar together until light yellow in color. Add a little of the hot mixture to the egg yolks and blend thoroughly. Then add the egg yolk mixture to the hot milk mixture, stirring constantly. Place the double boiler over medium heat and cook until tapioca mixture is very thick, about 15 minutes. Beat egg whites until stiff. (The kids really liked watching the whites go from looking like nose goo to looking like whipped cream in front of their eyes while I whisked it in the bowl.) Slowly fold the egg whites into the hot tapioa mixture. Stir in vanilla (and this is where I stirred in 1/2 Cup of strawberry puree, I should have used a whole cup). Serve warm or chilled. Makes 6 cups.

And last night I had the boys over for dinner again. Mom was out of town so Dad came over and joined us too. We had tamales (black bean, pork and chicken all with green sauce and sour cream) and talapia (marinated and baked with garlic Italian salad dressing) and Italian herbed chicken breasts (made and frozen by HEB, reheated by me) and sauteed mixed veggies (butter and spike seasoning) and that great cole slaw I made the other day and sauteed scallops (butter and Old Bay seasoning) and strawberry tapioca pudding.