YAMASAN

For the February sipdown prompt, “A tea gifted to you.” I received this from Todd over the last holiday season. Thank you, Todd!

I now keep a bag of culinary matcha in my cupboard at all times since I put it in my breakfast smoothie every morning. I am on a 3-month “auto” reorder with Mizuba, but this month the timing is such that I ran out a day before the new bag would arrive. So, I pulled out this Sakura Matcha to make my breakfast smoothie today!

1 cup vanilla almond milk, 1 cup frozen strawberries, 1 tsp sakura matcha powder, 3 TBS yogurt, blended. It’s great! It has that nice, authentic sakura flavor, that is a bit of a cross between floral/cherry/umami that is hard to describe, and is lacking added sugars or salts, which makes the matcha pretty flexible for its use. I never taste the actual matcha flavor in my smoothies (I add it for the caffeine boost!), but I definitely taste the sakura along with the strawberries!

…I’ve been drinking a lot of sakura tea lately, and I’m still a month away from its season. Obviously I’m ready for spring now.