Matcha Overnight Oats

~Amanda~

Last week Jackie and I took a girls trip to New York City with our mom and it was one of the greatest places and trips ever! I have never been there before and I think it’s safe to say that we saw just about everything that there was to see out there. But hey, let’s be honest, we are obsessed about food so it was just as much about eating our way through NYC as it was about seeing all the sights, and boy did we do that well. We hit up so many amazing restaurants and cafes and had some of the most incredible food ever. One of the highlights for me was that there was a Juice Press right around the corner from our hotel and it became my favorite place, I went there every single day to get delicious juices and smoothies filled with lots of nutrients that kept me feeling good and healthy between all the indulgent meals. On the last day, I got my favorite smoothie of the whole trip, The Brazilian! It was made with almond milk, avocado, spirulina, mesquite powder, agave, and MATCHA – my new favorite ingredient. After I got home, I was feeling inspired by this delicious green drink and incorporated some of those delicious flavors into my favorite overnight oats recipe, and that’s how these incredible Matcha Overnight Oats were born!

I have been obsessed with match for a while now and love to find different ways of incorporating it into some of my favorite recipes (matcha banana bread anyone?!). Plus, it’s one of the most amazing super foods ever; it can help fight cancer, it’s has anti-aging components, it’s a HUGE energy booster – goodbye coffee, it improves your mind and focus, it burns calories, and it is a great detoxer. This article on SportsBettingDime.com put odds on what the next super foods of the year are and Matcha is at 5/1…pretty good odds, I’d say! There are a ton of awesome super foods featured on there that I love to cook with like black cumin seed, green beans, and seaweed, but I was particularly focused on the Matcha because I’ve been using it so much in my cooking lately and was so happy to see that it was featured as such a big, upcoming super food.

So what exactly is matcha? I had to do a little research to actually find out after all the time using it haha, I know it’s a form of green tea and great for me and that I love the taste of it, but I really wanted to know what it was too – so after some googling, I found this article on Health.com about matcha and found out that what makes matcha different from green tea is the fact that you are actually consuming the leaf that has been finely ground up. Whereas with green tea, you are just drinking water that’s infused with the leaves. So clearly, the benefits are going to be higher when you’re getting the whole tea leaf and that explains all those awesome benefits! So now that I’ve gone on about how great matcha is, let’s get to the recipe for matcha overnight oats. To make them you combine oats with the matcha powder, almond milk, yogurt (I use vanilla coconut milk yogurt to keep things dairy free and to get a little bit of sweetness and flavor from the vanilla), and chia seeds and then soak them in the fridge overnight. When it’s time for breakfast, top the oats with blueberries, coconut, granola, nut butter – whatever your heart desires – it’s all amazing! I hope you love it and are inspired to use matcha in a bunch of your recipes now too!