I’ve happily rediscovered Mate
Back in 1980 I spent 10 weeks in Montevideo, Uruguay, as an AFS exchange student. I had a wonderful time, and should probably write a long, rambling memoir of it, but that’s not gonna happen this afternoon. No, children, today I will speak of one of the many things I came to know on that trip, namely yerba mate. Mate is a dried leaf that is sort of like tea. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but it was the social drink of choice when I was there, especially among the men, and I got quite fond of it while I was there.
As part of my souvenir purchasing before returning home, I bought a full set of the gear for, you see, drinking mate is a fairly complex affair. The standard drill (at least when I was in Uruguay) was to put the dried leaves in a hollowed out gourd cup; the cup could be small for individual use, or quite large for a group to share. You drank out of a metal straw with a strainer built in to the lower end so you didn’t suck up all the leaf bits. Small amounts of hot water was poured into a part of the gourd, and you then drank that water. Once an area of the gourd had lost its flavor, you moved to a different area.
I brought back a gourd with a little leather cup (so it would sit on a table without rolling off), a straw, and a kilo of mate (which got a lot of attention at the Miami airport). Unfortunately everyone at home was pretty put off; Dad said it tasted like the runoff from a hay stack, and that was fairly representative of the response. In Uruguay mate had been a social event, and in the absence of any interest back home, mate gently drifted out of my life.
A few weeks ago, however, it drifted right back in. We were at our wonderful Pomme de Terre Food Coop and there on the shelf was Mate in tea bags(!) from EcoTeas. I almost didn’t get any ’cause it just seemed so weird to have it in a tea bag, but in the end I just couldn’t resist, and I’m glad I didn’t. The taste brought back lots of fond memories, and I’ve really enjoyed drinking it (nearly done with my 50 bag box!). It’s obviously not quite the same as it was in Uruguay (if for no other reason than I’m quite a different person than I was 25 years ago!), but it’s still like having an old friend back. I just had a cup with some New Glarus Bakery cookies after a fine lunch of WeatherGirl’s excellent Moroccan chicken. What a happy jumble of culinary cultures :-).
The EcoTeas folks seem to really know their stuff, and sell not just the mate leaf (both loose and in bags), but a nice range of accessories (e.g., gourds and straws) in case you want to get into it more seriously.
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