Those two months of watching the world start to fall apart was seen placidly over the lip of hojicha lattes in the arts district, pulled through a mokopot & had with frothed milk before heading to my research desk over at the architecture school to redline for hours on end. Good times lol.
No, really. It was great!
& then when I’d hopscotched from Pasadena, back to the bird streets back to Bunker Hill in July of 2020 I was marching my you know what to Marukai to grab packs of it again each week.
But this is an age-old waltz. 2016, up in Hollywood, & 2018 in Venice… this pouch was always worth the trek.
There’s other kinds/ brands, of course. I used to grab it from Chado down in Little Tokyo(I always cross it in my mind with SF’s Japantown) or up at Hollywood & Highland running in and out of town before Sausalito introduced me to WAO tea, which is just a whole nother level of tea across the board.
…To this day when it’s ritualistic I reach out to the doyenne helming WAO tea for this .
My one time fussing “Okay! That’s Enough, Erewhon!” was in 2018, when I was seduced into trying a whitewashed packet of hojicha, prepared matcha style. Erewhon usually can never go wrong with a silly foods person (thaaat IS a thing) like me but the seeming asiatic gentrification was real . …But I couldn’t resist. I was face to face with the quasi- possibly gonna be an abomination of it because I’d trekked to dtla & they were out of my baseline at multiple spots.
It wasn’t bad – the erewhon sourced roasted matcha…but it hurt my heart lol.
Even starting the year down here for a good six weeks this brand eluded me.
But TODAY it was at multiple locations.
I may just have to start treating it like Dallmayr Prodomo coffee and start stockpiling it when I come across it.
But yeah, this is the one God put me on in January/ February 2020, when he got me back on daily qigong & had me plying myself (very happily) with mushroom congee like daily. Took me off most all else too.
& I mean… I’d gotten sick with what I now know was IT out in Venice. I sat in a jacuzzi three days redlining Exist, soldiering through whatever the fuck it was. I think I even went full blown Northeasterner & had tracked down Buckley’s. #sommayallknow.
But talk about being glad I listened.
Now, I know the immunity benefits of it. On top of the L-theanine. & maybe I woke up craving it today not just because my body knew it was nearby, but also because I started sneezing big time yesterday due to some honeysuckle chocolate. The desire was for it.
Heck, I may be being nudged gently again. That this election is gonna be a veritable boots on the ground shitshow & to start gearing up now.