I’m really into my teas. Ever since I discovered I was lactose intolerant and could only drink black tea (which is horrible, btw) I started trying various other alternatives and discovered I way prefer these teas to a regular ‘Red’ tea. Up until recently, my favourites have been White tea, Green tea, and more recently Oolong tea (well, this favouritism was more due to the fact that Oolong is cited as apparently the ‘slimming tea’, you learn to love a few things when they claim to do that).
So a few months ago I was having a conversation about said Oolong tea with the lovely Krista from Handpicked Media, when she suggested I try Matcha tea. She said this tea was the best to increase energy and was also packed with all types of goodness; antioxidants and nutrients galore! And it had also been reported that drinkers had lost a few pounds too.. So of course, that night I went online and ordered some!
What is Matcha?
Matcha is simply ground is up Green tea leaves, it comes in a green powder form and the brighter the colour green it is, the better quality the Matcha!
This is a good example of premium good quality Matcha!
Photo: Google Images
Matcha boasts a staggering 137x the antioxidants of regular Green tea, and is full of nutrients. So, it’s pretty much a ‘Super Tea’. Whilst it does have caffeine, combined with its natural amino acids this actually provides a sustained energy high, without the jitters or caffeine come down. I have it every morning and it’s the perfect start to my day!
You can make a Matcha tea by just the regular methods of using water (cold then hot) and mixing the powder with it. Or you can make yourself a delicious Matcha latte like I’ve shown in the vid below.. I looooove these latte’s!
I first bought my Match tea from Jing Tea (alongside some other bits and bobs, like miniature tea pots, etc. I’ve discovered I can pretty much over-shop anywhere, worryingly). Whilst this tea (and the shopping experience) was lovely and the Matcha certainly appeared to be of premium quality, at £15 per 20g it was getting expensive. So after some research I found this little store on Ebay, where I can buy 40g of premium Matcha for £10! In my opinion the tea was just as good (and their feedback agrees with me) and I’ve actually ordered from there twice now so I’m clearly happy with the product.
You don’t have to use flavoured syrup either, you could just use regular sugar if you wanted. But if you did want to use the syrups, you can pretty much buy them anywhere. However I wanted a special fat free one so opted for the Songbird brand syrup, I get mine from Cream Supplies and one bottle (as stated in the vid) lasts about 2-3 months and is priced at around £7 each. I should mention the shipping is quite high but the thought of drinking 3 pumps of full fat, sugary syrup daily fills me with dread so I personally think it’s worth the extra pennies to get a fat free version!
As I’ve stated in this post a million times already, I have this delicious Matcha latte single every day! Yep, I guess it is quite expensive for a tea, but the health benefits and pure yummy-ness is completely worth it. I have one mug in the morning, and then I switch to Green/White/Oolong tea for the rest of the day.. It gives me lots of energy, and doesn’t give me that horrible jittery ‘caffeine high’. Lastly, I feel good about myself when drinking it, like I’m drinking in health. Ahhhh..
Lx
