Favourite Tipple

Tom the gardener arrived this morning at about 10.45am and he worked hard until around 5pm.  He spent the whole time sorting through the holly branches, choosing bits of wood that he wanted to keep and chopping up the rest into small pieces.  There's too much for him to take away so he has been piling it on the spare land outside my back fence.  He still has loads to do so he is coming back tomorrow. The weather has been dull all day  - it started off dry but the rain  set in this afternoon and it got quite heavy at times.  Tom didn't seem to mind he just worked on while listening to Gardener's Question Time on his little radio.

I popped down to the village this afternoon as I needed to get my repeat prescription, go to the bank and get a bit of shopping.

I will have to leave Tom to it when he comes tomorrow as I'm off to the football.  Newcastle are at home to Liverpool.  Our Captain Fabricio Coloccini is injured and its doubtful he will play.  My favourite player Jonás Gutiérrez is not playing either as he has had to return to Argentina to deal with a personal matter.  I was looking forward to seeing him as he was about to return to the side after a few weeks off through injury.  I'm hopeful of a good result but that may be false hope as 6 months ago we lost at home to Liverpool 6 - 0.  Grown men were almost crying.

The Forum Challenge today is Favourite Tipple.  As far as alcoholic drinks are concerned I like to drink cocktails if I am out with my daughter and son in law.  I like sweet ones - my favourite is probably pina colada.  At Christmastime at home I enjoy the odd glass of Bailey's Irish cream.  I never drink tea or coffee.  On a daily basis my favourite drink is diet cola.

However I have chosen to blip something I drink every morning.  I would class it as my favourite healthy drink.  Its Matcha - super-concentrated green tea powder.  137 times the antioxidants of standard green tea, 70 times the antioxidants of orange juice and 9 times the beta carotene of spinach.  Powerful stuff.  It’s been a ceremonial beverage drunk by Buddhist monks and royalty for over 900 years.  Until recently virtually all matcha has been consumed within Japan.  I don't really like the taste of it as I don't like green tea and this powder has a really strong taste.  I used to mix it with orange juice but Slimming World don't recommend drinking fruit juice so now I just whizz it up in a small amount of cola.  My daughter likes to put it in her smoothies and she also uses it to make matcha muffins and matcha ice cream.  Of course you can mix it with hot water and drink it as a tea - I gave Tom the gardener a cup this afternoon and he said he liked it.