matcha

 

This morning I had my very first Matcha shot! Matcha is a form of Japanese green tea. The leaves are grown in the shade, picked, dried and then ground into a fine green powder. The media has been all over green tea lately, but I just recently found out that to receive all of the awesome health benefits they talk about, you need to be drinking 6-9 cups of the tea a day! (Of course, if you told me that I had to drink that much tea in a day I'd be all over it, excited even. One might say that I'm developing a serious tea addiction. And by serious, I mean I'd rather buy tea than food.) For some reason, some people in the world don't think tea is the coolest thing ever and gripe about this. Enter Matcha. One shot of this traditional, concentrated green tea powder contains as many nutrients as 6-9 cups of steeped tea!

For my first shot I mixed the Matcha in with some chilled soy milk and about 1/4 teaspoon of honey. It definitely has a strong taste, very similar to steeped Sencha green tea. I found all kinds of awesome recipes here and am looking forward to experimenting!