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Second smoothie try today, used less matcha in general and also sifted it before blending. Much better this time around – and the color is much more appetizing as well! The taste is still much more GREEN TEA RAR than either of the other two matchas I’ve tried, so it makes for quite a different smoothie, but it’s also tasty this way, so I’m good. I will even be magnanimous and inch the rating up a bit.

Trying to finish this off. Getting more and more meh on it.

Tried sifting the matcha in order to have it plain today. Dissolved very nicely so it looks like sifting is the way to go with it. It’s interesting because the color was darker than i expected it to be, more towards olive than other matchas I’ve seen. I may have added too much water though, I am out of practice with plain matcha.

Plain, this matcha seems to have a much lighter taste than either the DoMatcha or the strawberry matcha, but once again, I may have diluted it a bit too much. As expected it doesn’t have the smoothness that the DoMatcha has, but I mentioned before that it is pretty cheap stuff. HOLY shit I just saw a frickin HUGE squirrel. I thought it was a cat at first, and it’s tail was, like…SO FLUFFY. ahem back to the matcha! (note to self: matcha does not help short attention spans) Anyway, clearly this is a matcha for mixing with stuff – not as awesome for mixing as the strawberry matcha, of course, but not something I’ll be falling over myself to drink plain unless I REALLY need a quick energy boost.

Went out walking today, and found a historical park about 15 minutes from my new place, score! love historical parks. Took some casablanca twist with me on my walk, which was a good choice, I think. The mint was very refreshing.

I was thinking about this tea and how much of it is basically an herbal tea – just looking at it, the darjeeling seems to only appear here and there. Now, as I understand it, you’re supposed to use a bit more herbal tea when steeping than you would use black tea, so I decided to go with 1.5 times what I use normally to see if it made any difference. It’s hard to evaluate this without immediately drinking another mug of it prepared the normal way, but it did seem ‘more’ more minty, more refreshing…I dunno, maybe that’s just because I was expecting it to.

First trial of the matcha I bought from the coffee shop yesterday. Again, I have no idea where they get it from, so I just wrote what it said on the label.

This is from a strawberry banana smoothie, so it’s not a straight taste, I’ll probably try it by itself later, maybe tomorrow. My impression is that it is much stronger than the other matcha’s I’ve had. I’m getting less subtle smoothness and more rar I am concentrated powdered green teaaaaaa rar out of it. Also, it doesn’t seem to have blended as well, so I should probably try sifting it, or possibly even dissolving it in water prior to putting it in the blender. I’m not overly disappointed or anything, since I wasn’t really expecting much for $5/oz; it’s still tasty enough, it’ll just require a bit more tweaking to figure out how to get it to work for me.

No rating pending trying out the stuff I mentioned above and trying it by itself.

So, while exploring the neighborhood I moved too, I came upon a coffee/tea/bulk spices/random knickknack shop called “Vices and Spices” where you can buy tea both in bulk and to drink right then. My mom was with me at the time, and, as it was coming close to my birthday she got me a 50 dollar gifts certificate (isn’t my mum the best?), which today I went to use so that I could have interim matcha while I try and convince my brother to mail me the strawberry matcha I left at his place. Since I was there, I thought I might as well try some tea as well and I went with this.

Now, I asked the person working there if she knew where/who they got their teas from, but unfortunately she had no clue, so I’m just going to be writing these up under the shop name. Such is life!

Weirdly, despite the fact that I have both lived in Japan and study it, I have never actually tried green tea with sakura before. Which is a shame, because it is SUPER tasty. I really like the combination of green tea and sakura/cherry flavoring, apparently! It tastes like pudding! I seem to get pudding association with teas fairly often. Oh well. And this tastiness was accomplished with boiling water! Imagine how tasty it (hopefully) is when prepared with water at the right temperature! I know I sound pretty enthusiastic, but I’m happy to have found a green tea that I actually like.

Anyway, this tea is only 2.00 an ounce, so I will definitely be going back for some to add to my cupboard once I clear out what’s currently in there a bit…

Seems like a lot of people have been logging this lately. It really made me crave it, so…here I am! Mmmm, this tea is definitely one of my favorites from 52teas so far. I mean, it just WORKS so well, I still can’t believe what I am tasting half the time.

After Earl Grey Special, it was time for my other Earl…Earl Grey Cheesecake, you could stand to be more complicated! I need more cheesecake, darn it! But your straightforward Earl Grey-ness is also delicious.

Cold again today, need lots o’tea. Also, after being somewhat Earl Grey deprived over the holiday weekend (we had Rishi Earl Grey which is good! Don’t get me wrong. But…there was not a lot and we had to split it and it was kinda…weak. and the water wasn’t very good. and that’s coming from someone who lives in Santa Barbara, motto: “Holy Shit The Sediment In My Electric Kettle Is Like An Inch Thick”) I decided to get all Earl Grey-y today.

Mmm, delicious Earl Grey Special, you are complex! But delicious.

Back-logging:
This past weekend I visited my brother and his wife (and my ADORABLE NIECE) and I convinced them to try matcha smoothies made with this matcha. We used yoghurt, bananas, frozen mango and soy milk and 1.5 teaspoons of matcha for the three of us. I was a little worried about the mango, but it’s a pretty mild fruit so I thought it would be ok. Thankfully this turned out to be the case. Yay!

The smoothies were delicious, although the strawberry flavor was mostly masked, still, the creaminess that matcha lends to things was definitely discernible. Love creaminess so much! My brother and his wife both thought it was super tasty and were totally stoked about the health benefits, but were kind of worried about the effect the caffeine might have on the baby, so I don’t think they’re going to become matcha regulars until she’s completely on solid foods.

Still, I would call this experiment a success. (of course, then I promptly forgot the strawberry matcha up there, so I am currently matcha-less ;_;)