Lifestyle Archives

Beautiful tea untensils

03.4.2019

Have you ever attended to a formal Japanese tea ceremony? You might be surprised to hear that the formal tea ceremony takes around four hours. During the formal tea ceremony, guests eat a beautifully presented traditional simple meal (usually rice, soup, fish and seasonal vegetables), one main beautiful crafted confection (usually made of bean paste) and dry sweets (usually candies or rice crackers) to enhance the flavour of tea, and two types of Matcha. One is Koicha (thick tea) and the other one is called Usucha (thin tea). Around the 15th century, Juko Murata started the style of Chado (tea ceremony) which was completed by Riku Sen who added the idea of Zen to Chado. You may remember that Theresa May was welcomed by the Japanese...

How to start your Japanese green tea life. Vol3. Gyokuro and Kabusecha

28.2.2018

Food, Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

If you've already read the Vol1 and Vol2 of these story series, I think you are ready to go forward to these special tea. Gyokuro and Kabusecha are usually more expensive than Sencha, Hojicha and Genmaicha because they are grown with special care. Gyokuro tea fields are covered for about 20 days before harvest by straw or sheets made from synthetic fibres to hinder their exposure to sunlight. (Kabusecha fields are covered for about 10days before harvest.) The effect of covering tea fields is to avoid the chemical reaction that lowers the amount of amino acid and increase the amount of catechin. Amino acid gives tea more umami and sweetness and catechin gives tea astringency and bitterness. Thanks to the shading effect, Gyokuro and Kabusecha have more umami...

How to start your Japanese green Tea life. Vol.1 Sencha

04.1.2017

Lifestyle

As you may notice that, there are varieties of Japanese green Tea, Gyokuro, Matcha, Sencha, Hojicha, Genmaicha...

Matcha Fever

07.11.2016

Food, Health, Lifestyle

My five-year old son loves innocent SUPER SMOOTHIE series. There are three types, red =energise, yellow=recharge and green=invigorate. He especially loves the green one, although he is not a big fan of green coloured vegetables. The ingredients of the green one were kiwi, lime, wheatgrass and flax seeds plus vitamins B2, B3 , B6 and C&E. http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/super-smoothies Now they are offering the new recipe including one super ingredient. And do you know what the ingredient is? That is Matcha (Powered green tea). They explained Matcha like this. "Matcha is a special powder made from green tea. While we might not all be able to fit a 4am meditation into our schedules, Buddhist monks have been using Matcha tea for nine hundreds years. So as you drink this, you...

Green Tea in Magazines

30.10.2016

Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

As you can easily imagine, Japanese people are really keen on their health. They like to watch TV programs about healthy food and life style and after the program suggested that some product may increase your health, on the next day all of those products are quickly gone in the supermarkets. They also like to know about their health conditions, even they have no symptoms at all. So annual health check is essential for their life. You might be surprised to know that Japanese company forced all employees to have heath check every year. If the result shows any risks, company doctor will contact you and have discussion about your health in person. I've been to health check for the first time in UK today. It was a lovely experience to...

Green tea is the new super ingredient.

09.10.2016

Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

I watched the documentary program ' The Truth about meat ' in BBC on 29th Sep 2016, and I found out an amazing fact that one German professor is trying to make a healthier processed meat (sausages in the show). Processed meats, like sausages, salami, ham are thought to increase the risk of bowel cancer (if you eat everyday by 18%) because of the nitrites which ironically protect us from bacteria. So the German professor is trying to put some ingredients to combat the negative effect of nitrites. And do you know what the main ingredient is? One of the main ingredients is Green tea extract!!! He said the extract allows to reduce the amount of nitrites and prevent the format of cancer causing compounds.That’s a...

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