I did get a fix of boba tea at the pho place. I really enjoyed the honeydew flavored one.
We hit the Asian market on the way out, and I searched high and low and finally found an onigiri mold, which was, quite prominently labeled "Musubi Mold"! Ichi-ban, in Longmont, called the rice balls Omusubi. A look on Google and I found, of course,
Yes. Jet likes the resultant rice balls. He ate TWO of them, with furikake, lots of it. Kathy calls furikake "fish bacon", as it's dried, toasted fish, nori crumbs, sesame seeds, and other 'flavorings'. We have a wasabi flavor, a tonkatsu flavor (toasted pork bits with soy), and one that has no romanji analog that has whole, tiny, dried fish. Jet keeps picking the wasabi and tonkatsu ones. I finally ended up mixing the whole fish one right into the rice before packing it with the mold and it turned out really nicely. Yum. Fish, seaweed, and rice, what a very cool lunch.
The mold makes it infinitely easier to make the firm-packed balls that hold together when eating. I can't seem to pack the handmade ones tight enough.
I also picked up some tapioca to make my own bubble tea, and a few straws for them. My experiments didn't work out too well to start, but then I may have a built-in aversion to two entire ounces of simple syrup in a 16 ounce drink that is half ice. Yow. A quarter of the drink is sugar??? Aiee.
Then I made one with pu-erh. Yeah. Strange me. But it was very good and strong enough against the milk and sugar. Yow.