As promised, the duck and I proudly share a photo celebrating a snack we ate outside our home:
Our friend T had wanted to visit Plants and Cakes, a cafe in Frankfurt that offers plant-based, gluten- and (refined) sugar-free treats, for a while. Almost two years later, we finally had our cake and ate it too. After a quick examination of the display case, the duck and I predictably ordered the one matcha treat we could find: A raw Mango Matcha Brownie. Its flavor was a bit too mild for our tastes – the hint of matcha, mixed with the fruitiness of the mango, couldn’t satisfy our matcha cravings. We also got a Peanut Choc Raw Cake Pod with oats to share with T and her travel friend, which was divine! Our considerate cake companions kindly let us try their raw mini cakes too. So we also got to taste passionfruit with berries, I think, and something with white chocolate and peanut, maybe? All told, we had a lovely, flavorful afternoon. 4/5 tea leaves for our culinary satisfaction (as matcha snobs), 5/5 plants and cakes for the convivial company, and an appealing ambiance. ・🪴♡🍰・
This was also the perfect opportunity to test the photographic abilities of our compact new camera friend before we went on a cinematographic adventure the next day. More on that some other time.
The matcha the duck and I currently use claims to be from Uji. So, whenever we make ourselves a relaxing cup ofoat matcha latte, we remember that time we enjoyed a delicious cup of Uji matcha in Uji, “the town where the most beautiful matcha lives”(according to some weirdo in a video)! We briefly mentioned this mouthwatering matcha memory in the audiovisual report about our short Kyoto stint many years ago. However, we think it’s too deliciously beautiful to not share again. Uji was one of the last stops during our cold Kyoto autumn adventure. Sitting at that charming tea shop called Ocha no Kanbayashi, enjoying a cup of Uji matcha, and chatting with our lovely Kyoto travel companions made the duck and me sad that this terrific trip was ending. It did make for one of our favorite Japan memories, though, visual and culinary (not for the cold, however, that we still felt in our bones days after we had returned to Tokyo). Five (aromatic tea) leaves for this extraordinary experience! 🍃♥🍁♥🍃
The duck and I can’t wait for our next Japan adventure – whenever that may be. What are your favorite gustatory memories?
Having devoured our last tub of grocery store vegan ice cream, the duck and I decided it was time we made our own non-dairy ice cream. We wanted it to have all of our favorite flavors, not only peanut butter and sandwich cookie pieces that remind us of ice cream sandwich “bread.” Our ice cream would include matcha and pretzels, too! This would be the ice cream of the future, the duck and I thought, as we tried coming up with a recipe while listening to one of our favorite friend-recommended podcasts. Flash Forward is all about “possible and not so possible future scenarios,” as host Rose Eveleth explains at the beginning of each episode. Today’s friend recommendation actually dates back to the weekend the duck and I watched one of our absolute favorite movies, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, for the first time, together with our lovely friends J and Al. I wonder what our lives would be like had we just stayed at home that weekend. That’s a future that I don’t want to imagine. Let’s talk about more exciting future scenarios instead – alongside a summary of how the duck and my (too-)many-flavors ice cream came to be:
A rather long while ago, when pandemics were still nothing but a nightmare scenario in movies and history books that health professionals occasionally warned about, the duck and I met up with our cool Frankfurt friend JD to go to Iimori Pâtisserie for a little Japanese pastry break! Even though I had tried melon pan, or melon bread, before and was disappointed by the lack of melon flavor (I didn’t know back then that the name describes the look rather than the taste), when I saw a matcha melon pan in the display case, I knew that the duck and I had to get it. So we did! And I wasn’t disappointed. Sure, this was still a bit too sweet for the duck and my weird tastes, like all melon pan. But the memory of our beloved Konbini was enough to make us thoroughly enjoy this beautiful pastry, as well as catching up with our friend! 5/5 matcha ducks! ♥
Now that I think about it, it’s been way too long since the duck and I have had any kind of Japanese pastry… we should change that!
Last year, when friends were visiting Berlin, the duck and I suggested meeting at this cafe that we’d been meaning to check out for weeks which is known for its #famous smoothie shakes and hipster sandwiches. We entered Two Planets planning on getting a #David Hasslehoff because peanut butter ♥ but, unfortunately, they were out. So we accepted our fate and got a Matcha Latte, as we always do whenever we see it on the menu. This one we could order with oat milk, though, which is our favorite milk by far (I know it’s technically not milk, but for us it is). Best. Decision. Ever. We had a great time catching up, making new friends and recording a short video for our old friend M (whom the duck and I had profound conversations in Japanese and burgers with back when we lived in Tokyo) who knows the three of us and had no idea we were meeting up. Great times, great drink. 6/5 oat and matcha ducks ♪
Earlier this week the lovely Joy from Rabbithole Comics nominated us for a Sunshine Blogger Award. Thank you, Joy! The duck and I feel so honored!
As per our New Year’s Resolutions the duck and I are still super lazy and slow, so it will take us a while to think up our own questions and nominations (hopefully we will eventually). However, we decided that, for now, we could at least answer her questions in a little added bonus section of this (normally rather short) post (format):
The duck and I LOVE tea, and by that I mean the liquid kind you can drink from a mug (we’re terrible at gossiping). When we were living in Japan we fell in love with the green tea varieties you could buy there, so much so that when our lovely friend C asked us if there’s anything she could send us from Japan, we responded by sending her a photo of a green tea pouch. Nothing else. We’re those people. We miss being able to buy bottled green tea from the vending machine around the corner even though, cheap as we are, we usually got some at the supermarket at a much better price. Last summer when the duck and I were suffering in our hot (and not yet super beautiful) Berlin bedroom we spent hours browsing all kinds of shopping sites for a nice big thermos so that we could steep our imported tea in the evening, chill it down in the refrigerator overnight, and fill it up to go the next morning. Our laziness and stinginess were stronger. Instead, we made do with drinking our Japanese green tea hot out of a mug, like normal Europeans.
We also knew that if we didn’t ration our 100 green tea bags, we would drink them within a month. So the duck and I had to look at other tea options and that reminded us of the one thing we were not so happy with in Japan: the selection of non-Japanese tea and the crazy prices for the few varieties the grocery stores did carry (I mean 250 yen for 10 bags? Who has that kind of money?!)! But now that we’re living in Berlin (baby), we buy all the non-Japanese tea we want and nobody can stop us!
It’s actually gotten to a point where 90% of our daily water intake is through tea and when new friends and acquaintances are asked to name our cult or design a casket for us you bet it’s tea-related! Actually, the duck and I recently found a picture of a portrait that our former flatmate had drawn on our door: me with my hoodie on (I’m always cold, man) sipping tea from my personal mug.
Even though the duck and my appreciation for tea goes way back, we have recently noticed that we have, indeed, gone through a few tea phases. And, because we’re nice, we’re happy to share our most recent teanalasys with you: Continue reading →
It’s been a while…
The duck and I have been busy doing something for a change. Actually working hard (for our standards) in the past few weeks made us remember a fun little incident a few weeks back: It all had to do with a pretty box our lovely friend M. had given us before we left Japan. She probably explained to us what was inside, but the duck and I, being the matcha maniacs that we are, only heard this one word – matcha – compared it to the hiragana on the box, because our kanji skills are still far from actually useful, and zoned out. ‘Cool, that’s perfect for our regular matcha latte cravings!’, we thought. ‘We could even try to recreate some of those matcha cookies we so loved!’.
So, when the day of unbearable matcha cravings had finally arrived, we took the pretty little box that, up to that point, had served as beautiful bookshelf decoration, opened it, and were amazingly surprised:
Guess what- it’s still spring, or, as we call it, matcha flavor season! And since there are still so many spring flavored snacks to be found in the grocery stores (though fruity summer flavors are slowly taking over the shelves), the duck and I just had to try two more green tea-y varieties – this time in the shape of those nice chocolaty Alfort biscuits!
At first, the bigger variety with a light biscuit and bright green chocolate caught our eye. Then, just a short while later, we discovered the darker mini matcha variety and we knew that we needed to try those as well – it was love at first sight after all!
In our first spring cookie test, the duck and I fell in love with the chewy matcha flavored cookies by the same manufacturer (I guess that makes us polyamorous). So, this time, our expectations were rather high, especially because we love the regular individually wrapped milk chocolate Alfort biscuits and the small snack-size dark ones! Anyway, I’m rambling too much. Let’s try to keep this super professional snack review rather concise for real this time:
Okay, I’ve already established how much the duck and I love that Japan does seasonal snacks so incredibly well. And, even though spring is only our second favorite season (because of the pollen, but we already mentioned that) it’s definitely our favorite snack season because of all the matcha flavored snacks! That’s why, when we discovered the spring edition of Fujiya’s LOOK chocolates featuring Uji matcha– *gasp* we’ve been to Uji! We had matcha there! – we had a nostalgic flashback to the time we taste-tested the autumn edition when we were still young, naive and not marked by the gruesome Tokyo winter that we had to go through (gosh, we’re dramatic!) to finally arrive at this beautiful season for beautiful snacks. Anyway, let’s stop the rambling and get to our subjective taste test: Continue reading →
IT’S FINALLY SPRING! Can you tell we’re excited? If it weren’t for my annoying pollen allergies, spring would actually have a great chance of being my favorite season (taking into account how the duck and I dramatically suffer in the cold)!
Despite the varied approaches to determining the official starting point of spring, once the cherry blossom season has begun, it doesn’t matter who you ask, everyone will agree that spring has arrived (even if it’s still super cold or rainy outside). For us, the countdown to the beginning of this lovely but painful (even with masks and allergy medicine) season started as soon as we saw the first spring-themed snacks on the Konbiniand grocery store shelves. When we discovered a pack of sakura (cherry blossom) flavored cookies back in February, the duck and I could not resist!
Spring also marks the new school and fiscal year in Japan (both start in April – which some see as the month for starting new things; April is Japan’s January for new year’s resolutions) and, more importantly, the season when matcha is a popular snack flavor everywhere, not only in Kyoto! Because of that, this time, we present you not one, but three(!) beautiful cookies that we’ve had the pleasure of trying in celebration of spring:
Today’s friend recommendation actually dates back to the weekend the duck and I watched 
A rather long while ago, when pandemics were still nothing but a nightmare scenario in movies and history books that health professionals occasionally warned about, the duck and I met up with our cool Frankfurt friend JD to go to Iimori Pâtisserie for a little Japanese pastry break! Even though I had tried melon pan, or melon bread, before and was disappointed by the lack of melon flavor (I didn’t know back then that the name describes the look rather than the taste), when I saw a 
Last year, when friends were visiting Berlin, the duck and I suggested meeting at this cafe that we’d been meaning to check out for weeks which is known for its #famous smoothie shakes and hipster sandwiches. We entered Two Planets planning on getting a #David Hasslehoff because peanut butter ♥ but, unfortunately, they were out. So we accepted our fate and got a Matcha Latte, as we always do whenever we see it on the menu. This one we could order with oat milk, though, which is our favorite milk by far (I know it’s technically not milk, but for us it is). Best. Decision. Ever. We had a great time catching up, making new friends and recording a short video for our old friend M (whom the duck and I had 
We miss being able to buy bottled green tea from the vending machine around the corner even though, cheap as we are, we usually got some at the supermarket at a much better price. Last summer when the duck and I were suffering in our hot (
the duck and I just had to try two more green tea-y varieties – this time in the shape of those nice chocolaty Alfort biscuits!
it’s definitely our favorite snack season because of all the matcha flavored snacks! That’s why, when we discovered the spring edition of Fujiya’s LOOK chocolates featuring Uji matcha – *gasp* 
For us, the countdown to the beginning of this lovely but painful (even with 
The Duck in... side 