it’s been a maccha kind of weekend.

first up, a saturday rendezvous in a pretentious frainch bakery with saffron, who immediately plied me with a brown paper bag tied up in pretty green ribbon.

perhaps you are unaware that when i moved house the other month, it took most of a large packing carton to hold my extensive brown (and white and pink and… you get the idea) paper bag collection. yes, i purged myself of stacks and stacks of magazines and somehow couldn’t put a single brown paper bag into the recycling bin.

um, anyway. so the brown paper bag was good, but inside was, as the girl herself said, “a lamington degustation. heh.” — better.

several hunks of sponge cake, a tub of red bean paste, a tub of maccha icing and a package of shaved coconut. intriguing, no? it’s just, there was a green tea lamington challenge sort of put out there, and a rising to the challenge, and a last minute maccha mishap… and thus, a serendipitous hamper. and saffron, i think it could still come together as soon as i go out and get a tub of cream.

cream will make it all better.

although i fear i will devour the yummy sponge before i get myself organised.

my mum arrived from warmer climes later in the day, and plied me with a lovely cardboard box, wrapped in beautiful japanese paper, wrapped in more beautiful japanese paper, in a gorgeous japanese print paper bag.

perhaps you are unaware that when i moved house the other month, it took quite a bit of a large packing carton to hold my extensive cardboard box collection… i’m not kidding. and of course you already know the story of the paper bags. sigh.

inside the box was a tray of minamoto kitchoan daifuku: six maccha-white chocolate and six dark chocolate. and two ceremonial toothpicks for impaling them like the sacrificial desserts they are. i had to immediately excuse myself and make a pot of genmaicha, and soon a fat, green thing was in my mouth. it tasted of green, then cool, and its core was soft white chocolatey.

at this point i want to share with you this message from the president of mitchoan kitchoan: “flavorful desserts can do much to bridge hearts when people get together. sometimes the dessert itself can serve to invent fresh topics of conversation. the joy of eating is only one of many roles a dessert or confectionery plays. it can enhance the moment when people cross paths, or it can convey a person’s true feeling toward someone very special.” yes.

sunday found us — sisters, mothers, daughters in a group of four, sitting in a bustling starbucks after the rest of the shoping centre had shut itself up. the baby had a hot chocolate all to herself, or at least the four centimeters of chocolate crema you get on half a cup of hot chocolate ordered off the kids’ menu. i’ve always found that i’m saddled with more hot chocolate than i want (yes, it is possible) when i buy one at a shop, so this is now my preferred hot chocolate. and only .85.

but my favourite starbucks treat is still the green tea frappacino, though sometimes i think it could taste a little more green. as my aunt observed this afternoon after sampling a spoonful from my cup, “it tastes like powdered non-dairy creamer”. but it’s green! specifically, that green.

and so, this third maccha confection brought the weekend to a close. there is a fourth for later: maccha biscuits studded with red beans, bought during a “supermarket sweep”-type frenzy earlier in the day, at a very cool asian grocery in chatswood. i’ve just looked at the receipt, and in fact the shop is called “miracle supermarket”, which it is.

if memory serves me correctly, my exchange, in mandarin, with the boss lady at checkout, went something like this:

“your stuff is really exciting!”
“exciting meh?”
“yes, there’s all this pocky i’ve never seen before!”
“oh, haha, thank you.”

i’ve never made anything with maccha, not even the tea itself. it’s mostly due to laziness, and partly due to not knowing which brand to get. as saffron apologetically explained, the one she bought tasted like rancid water. mmm. perhaps, santos, you could recommend a brand? you who seem to have had spectacular success with this, and this and especially this. i salute you.