I made some major life changes last year. Quit my job, put my things in storage, and even bought a one-way plane ticket to the opposite coast, like people in movies (and apparently actual people) do. I tell you this so you truly understand my perspective when I tell you that probably (maybe) the biggest change I made last year wasditching coffee for matcha。
这不是关于咖啡邪恶的文章。Coffee is not evil。咖啡是超越的，咖啡很完美。早上喝咖啡的味道让我想起了为什么我活着。我姐姐曾经给了我一个化学物质，使我能够酿造自己的花哨，粘稠和富有足够的浓度，我可以舒服地收费5.50美元的杯子。我从来没有这样做过，但在我辞职后，我考虑了它。
Point is, I love coffee. I love it a little too much. And when I love something I want to love it all the time.
IS IT THE DRINK OR THE RITUAL?
These days, as a freelancer, I spend hours hunched over my laptop. I need a ritual to repeat at regular intervals throughout the day, one that gets me to stand up straight, perform a task that isn’t typing and look at something that isn’t a screen. Most important, I need to inject a thunderous bolt of caffeine and purpose into my bloodstream.
A cup of coffee in the morning is great — actually even4 cups a dayis considered OK. But in my new life I was suddenly downing the equivalent of at least a pot by lunchtime, and my day, which started out like a commercial — morning sunlight, wistful smile, that first glorious sip — resembled a reboot of “Requiem for a Dream.” The music on my Sonos was jarring and faraway. My stomach was shredded. My teeth were yellow, my skin gray, my eyes red. I was dehydrated, and sweating in strange places, and I didn’t know where I was. I only knew what I must do to get my next fix. This state was not conducive to good writing or good anything.
MY FIRST MATCHA …
我不记得我的第一个比赛。我的第一个匹配记忆是想要避免它突然到处的时候，就像kombucha要么avocado toast, flooding millennial-pink cafés and over-designed restaurants and my Instagram feed. But that changed …
Matcha is like green tea only more so, made from shade-grown Japanese leaves that are ground into a fine powder. Green tea has been said to help weight loss, reduce metabolic syndrome and contain a range of antioxidants. But most important, the buzz is not the same as what you get in coffee.
The ritual of making matcha is similar to coffee, but different: Boil some water, pour some over a scoop of powder and — this is the best part (and something coffee lacks) — you pull out your little bamboo whisk. This all works best in a wide, deep mug or a bowl. Like, big enough to get your head in. Picture a toddler with a soup bowl.
The whisking ritual made me realize much of what I loved about coffee — besides the coffee, hot, delicious coffee — was the ritual of making it. Not the Chemex ritual specifically, just any ritual that involved boiling water. I like to spin the whisk around exactly 100 times, but sometimes I throw caution to the wind and only do 75.
当然，你可以做一个matcha latte通过加入杏仁牛奶，肉桂和龙舌兰。这是一个很好的，如果是亵渎神明的，混合物。但我更喜欢含咖啡因饮料（和人），正是他们是什么，而且没有。我喜欢我的咖啡黑色和我的火柴植物，就像我在脏叶子上吸吮。
The best part: I can do this all day. A matcha buzz is dialed down, focused and pleasant. And unlike when I drink coffee for hours, I’m not in need of an IV drip by sundown.
