Adventures in Tapioca-ing

So I drove home to my mom’s house last week for my grandmother’s birthday, and, as usual, my mother had deliciousness afoot. We had stuffed red bell peppers and tomatoes filled with a mix of veggies and either ground turkey or boca grounds, depending on hippie…er…meat-eating status. My brother and I snuck into the kitchen and put cheese in ours, too, because we think alike. But on to the point of this story.

For dessert, my mom had dug up a new recipe that was definitely not one of her old standards: tapioca pudding. She had sweetened it with maple syrup instead of sugar and added cardamom and what tasted like cinnamon and maybe nutmeg. And it was reeeal tasty. But it was also instant tapioca. So my inner kid-who-likes-to-play-with-chemistry-kits and inner food snob convinced me to try making it on my own. From scratch!