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I made this iced tea this morning and am only drinking it now. It has been sitting in front of me while I’ve been studying but I just haven’t thought to drink. Thankfully it is still cold and rather nice. It is creamy and lemon. A touch lemon-grassy but very dessert-like.

Sipdown (237)

Today is a bit gloomy so a hot tea would have been nice but I kept picking up fruity flavors that I thought would be fun to try iced. Such as this tea which I think has gotten old and is lacking some of that fruity punch it once had. My fault, not the teas.

It’s not bad. I get a lot of the floral oolong flavor upfront with an aftertaste of mango/strawberry. Pineapple is no where to be found but that might be due to there being a piece of strawberry and mango in the filter but no pineapple.

Tossed the ice trays in the freezer b/c the sun is out and the weather is warmer and iced tea sounds 100000x more appealing that hot. However, the ice isn’t ready yet and I wanted tea so I trued to go with something that had a lighter flavor. I was thinking Strawberry Champagne Cupcake but I didn’t find it. Instead I found this which is a fairly fall flavor profile (cranberry and brown sugar) but it was a white tea and it sounded good.

Alas, I don’t think this tastes great. I get lemon and soap. My guess is the latter is from the base tea. Some lemon. Some warmth from the brown sugar. And a touch of cranberry. But soap keeps popping up and I blame the base…and maybe age.

I found a new recipe for tea-infused hot chocolate because I was intrigued to find something different. I stumbled upon this one by Savvy Eats: http://www.savvyeat.com/tea-infused-hot-chocolate. It seemed simple enough and tbh I was skeptical that it would work b/c you only steep the tea in cold milk for like 15 minutes. I also used an older tea and was unsure how much flavor it still had.

The steeped milk gets mixed with a tbsp cocoa powder, a tbsp (a little less) of sugar, and 2 tbsps chocolate (I used 1 tbsp milk and 1 tbsp semi-sweet). I was surprised after all was said and done that I actually got some toffee flavor. It obviously was VERY chocolatey and very creamy but there was a caramel/toffee sweetness that snuck in.

Smoothie Sipdown (238)

I am quickly running out of food but I leave in a week so I keep trying to avoid buying food. This smoothie saw the end of my yogurt, my matchas, and left me with only 1 frozen banana. I also have no eggs. No bread. I finished my guacamole this morning. It is getting pretty barren in here but I am trying to just survive off the freezer foods and stuff that I have lingering around.

This smoothie was tasty at least. It had a lot of honey dew flavor. The key is to not use honey and instead use a shitton of the matcha. Then the flavor comes through rather distinctively. Well, as distinctive as honeydew can.

I woke up this morning (not really morning since it was like 10:30) and was super tired. I wanted to make myself tea since I don’t think I have had actual tea in quite some time (either matcha smoothies or EG hot chocolates, but not a cup of tea). As I turned on the kettle, I thought I would go for a straight black tea but since the weather is getting warmer it was the drawer of greens, whites, and oolongs that caught my eye. I looked for what-cha and grabbed the first bag I saw…this tea. Okay, I guess it was meant to be an oolong morning.

This one is pretty good. It is really floral today but milky as well. It is reminding me of vanilla orchid, but with less vanilla pudding flavor. It is not a bad cup to sip as I work on exam prep. 3 down, 3 to go…

Smoothie Sipdown (239)

Thank goodness for these smoothies that have helped me blow through all my old matcha. I was down to this or Honeydew Matcha and a maple banana smoothie sounded good so I went with this.

For today’s smoothie I skipped the honey and just used greek yogurt, milk, and banana and the entire sample I had left of this (easily a couple teaspoons-tablespoon) and it worked out well because this is distinctly maple. 1000% maple. Maple. Banana. Deliciousness.

I have 4 more exams – 1 Monday, 1 Wednesday, and 1 Friday. The last is the following Monday. I was worried about the Wednesday exam the most because it is for the class that had the most difficult midterm last semester and I had not even started studying for it. I allotted today and tomorrow for that exam (technically I guess it was yesterday and today now since its 12:20) and when I woke up at 11, I was kicking myself for sleeping half the day away. However, I got through 5/10 lectures today and that was my goal so I treated myself to an earl grey hot chocolate. It was ever so tasty.

Sipdown (240)

Just wrote my first final exam of my first year of law school. It was worth 100% and I didnt even finish. Most others didnt either so I think I’m riding the curve on this one.

Now that I’m home I’m relaxing a bit. Doing laundry. Drinking a smoothie that used all of what I had of this matcha to go with banana, honey, yogurt, and milk. My idea was that tropical fruits go with banana and I was right because this smoothie is good. It’s not distinctly Hawaiian Punch just as all the other smoothies didnt taste distinctly like the matcha they had in them but once again there is a flavor setting this apart from the others. Its extremely sweet and fruity but a generic fruitiness. Tasty.

Sipdown…sorta (241)

I think something in this soured because when I scooped out the leaf something smelled a bit weird. Not off, but savory which seemed out of place. There is also a drying/sour quality that I think is from the rose. I am just not pleased so this mug got dumped and the last serving got tossed