Iris and I went to Uwajimaya this morning and I remembered to get the green tea that JasonTrue recommended in the comments to my previous post about genmaicha. Iris also tried to get me to buy five little frozen whole fish, but I talked her into some frozen eel instead.

As for the tea, it’s MyGreenTea brand genmai-matcha, silk teabags of genmaicha dusted with matcha. So when you brew it up, you get the toasted rice flavor of genmaicha with the mouthfeel and brilliant green color of matcha. I love this tea. I can’t wait until tomorrow morning. Telling you about it, I feel like the drug dealer in the movie _Mask_ who said something like, “Try this. It’s dusted with angel weed.” Or something.

The MGT brand is certainly more expensive than the Yamamotoyama genmaicha I’d been drinking–at 30 cents per teabag, about three times as much. Was it worth it? I was dithering over this until I realized that a cup of tea at my local teashop costs *ten times* as much as the MGT. Not that I’m dissing my local teashop. If I drank all my tea at home, I’d save a bundle on tea and never get the slightest bit of work done.

You can order MyGreenTea online at YuzuMura.com. (I don’t get a commission or free tea. Too bad for me!)

Oops, two Starbucks posts in a row. This one is just a link to my new Culinate column:

Unexplained Bacon: Is it good to be the king?

I can’t believe they let me put a graph in this column.

edit: By which I meant, “I can’t believe they were so cool that they let me put in a graph rather than telling me that graphs scare readers off.”

I’m weighing in on this beyond the statute of limitations, but I assume everyone saw the internal memo from Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, that was leaked to the media last week. First of all, for a good laugh, look at the comments from all the people saying, “There’s no way this could be real.”

To me, it sounds like Schultz wrote this memo on his laptop at Victrola. I am waiting for his next memo, written after he pulls out of the drive-through at McDonald’s, suggesting that Starbucks should sell fries. Actually, it would be awesome if Starbucks sold fries. I still don’t understand why they sell Starbucks brand ice cream at supermarkets but don’t sell milkshakes at Starbucks. I would like to form a personal connection with that milkshake. I would like to see baristas scooping and blending with all their hearts.

* raw pork coke
* i made you a cookie but i eat it cat
* mackerel health
* what kind of milk is good for monkeys