First off, let me start off by saying how much I enjoy sharing new ingredients that you can incorporate in your daily routine — Ingredients that you might not yet be familiar with — that you could really benefit from. Anything from chia seeds, to flax seeds and now matcha!
Matcha, is essentially finely ground processed green tea. However, its actually more beneficial to drink matcha than other green tea because of the way it is grown.
According to Wikipedia, “It is also more effective for ingesting all the content in the leaves because people consume its entirety as dissolved in water, latte, smoothie or other creations. The antioxidant catechins, especially EGCG in green tea leaves, is one of the main reasons that many health-conscious people consume green tea leaves or matcha specifically.”
One of the reasons why I really wanted to make time for this post is because the matcha trend is really starting to kick off, but some people aren’t aware of what it is and therefore try to get it anywhere they can find it. That means getting it at places like Starbucks. They don’t realize that what they’re getting might be 50% matcha and 50% sugar.
But hey, I don’t blame them. After all, most of what you read online you suspect to be true and accurate. I was one of those people after I read this article.
But then a week later I read this one and was extremely disappointed that I bought something from Starbucks. I usually don’t go and I thought that their matcha tea would be the exception.
After 10 minutes of being extremely disappointed I set out to find natural green tea, and what better place to look than whole foods. I find it within five minutes of being in the store and I was on my way. So far, I’ve only used it in ice water with a splash of almond milk, a coconut water smoothie which is absolutely delicious (I will be sharing the recipe with you guys next week), and a green smoothie bowl (recipe via the glowing fridge)
Today I will be sharing with you the beautiful green smoothie that I made. Not only does it looks like it would be amazingly good for you, but it’s amazingly tasty too.
Ingredients include:
2 handfuls of spinach
2 frozen bananas
1/2 cup frozen pineapple
1/2 tablespoon ground flaxseed (optional)
1/2 teaspoon matcha powder
1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
your favorite toppings
Put them all in your blender until smooth and enjoy!
– Jenn
