Kale Matcha? Great for Smoothies perhaps.

Flavored teas or matchas never made sense to me. I hope people learn about and then boycott, all those packaged "foods" with label that read "natural flavors" for these are anything but natural, created in a lab somewhere to confuse your senses into thinking your are consuming something you are not, and eventually craving more. And what about all the added sugars in everything?!  Sugar further desensitize your taste buds, and you lose your ability to taste all the full flavors in whole food. When it comes to tea and matcha, why distort the amazingly rich flavor profiles that exist?

The other day, I happened upon a DAVIDsTEA shop, curious about their new matcha maker travel tea tumbler. The salesperson started to show me all their various matchas, most of which contain natural flavors or sugars, so I kindly turned them down. Then she showed me their kale matcha, and I was stunned and curious. The only two ingredients are matcha and kale powder. Since matcha already has a strong vegetal taste, as does kale, I wondered what the combination would be like. Before I knew it I was walking out of the store with 1/2 an ounce of this new formula (and without a matcha tumbler, however). What was I thinking?

Any purists may surely laugh at my susceptibility to marketing. First, the kale powder throws off the texture if making either a usucha or koicha. This matcha does not blend well, not frothing very well, and leaving particles of powder at the bottom of the bowl.  Furthermore, the taste profile is just wrong...that is, for a bowl of matcha.

Then I realized, this could be a great product for those of us who want to add the matcha flavor to our foods, but do not want many other ingredients in the list.  While I haven't made smoothies lately, this would be perfect in my morning vegetable Vitamix concoction. So if you have any amazing recipes where you add matcha to your whole foods cooking, please share them with me. I would love to test them out.