In the last three weeks

I've been to two weddings, moved, had house guests, and sent a kid off to camp. I'd love to start with how wonderful the weddings were, or maybe the 4,337 hassles of moving, but writing about tapioca pudding just seemed easier somehow.

So Jared & I made chocolate tapioca pudding today. Not the easy kind where you warm up the milk and dump in the box of powdery-pearly stuff, but the kind where you have to actually cook. We soaked the little pearls, separated eggs, beat the whites, measured sugar, and everything. Jared says he wants to grow up to be a cook, so it's good that he didn't lose interest in the process too quickly.

I had no idea that tapioca and cassava and yucca were all the same plant. Well, I knew about cassava and yucca, but not tapioca. I don't normally do this much research into my cooking projects, but I remembered having read once that tapioca was poisonous if it wasn't cooked properly. I wondered "How I would know if it was thoroughly cooked? Does the fact that it's become pudding necessarily mean it's well cooked?"

But with warning labels on everything up to and including beach balls and nary a one on the tapioca package, it seemed doubtful I could kill us off via tapioca. Sure enough another google search or two and I found out that the little pearls are pre-cooked. Phew! Time to celebrate with non-poisonous chocolate tapioca pudding with breakfast, lunch, and dinner!