¡Vamos a matear!

And yes, in response to those of you who remember jokes from the last post, we DO have yerba on hand today...none of THAT in this blog!

Anyhow, today´s update is devoted to this blog´s namesake, my new daily habit, and the very Uruguayan thing I will be subjecting a good number of people reading this to once I get back. That´s right, it´s MATE TIME. Yerba mate is a caffeinated tea-like plant grown in Paraguay, parts of Brazil, and northwestern Argentina, and people have been drinking it for thousands of years - right on back to the Guaraní. The Spanish colonists took to the drink, despite efforts by the Crown and the Catholic Church to outlaw it, and Argentines, Paraguayans, southern Brazilians, some Chileans, and especially Uruguayans have been drinking it ever since.

Mate isn´t like coffee or tea in that you just casually brew your own cup of it; if you want that, you have to buy bags of mate cocido, which is a tea made from mate. The real deal is best drunk with friends and family, all sharing the same cup (the mate). The person serving fills their mate (usually made from a gourd and often covered in leather) up with yerba (the loose crushed leaves from the plant) and adds a little room temperature water to prime the yerba (at least in Uruguay it´s like this...given the Uruguayan mate mania, I´m assuming this is the best way to do it). Then, the bombilla, a straw typically made from metal (they range from cheap bronze ones to fancier silver affairs to museum-quality gold ones encrusted with jewels) is put in, and hot (but not boiling) water is poured in, with care taken not to pour water over all the the yerba...just a part of it. The server then takes their turn, trying the mate and adjusting the bombilla as needed. Once things are just right, the server pours water again and passes the mate to the person next to them, and on it goes around the group - each person drinks down the contents, passes it back to the server, and the cycle repeats. A good server can work the same yerba for a LONG time - at least for one liter of hot water, often more.

Mate itself is suspected of having a lot of good health benefits - high in antioxidants, possibly a natural appetite suppressent/weight loss aid...all kinds of stuff. It tastes a little bitter at first, and probably everyone has burned their tongues or lips at least a few times between the hot mate and the hot bombilla (the downside of metal straws is that they heat up awfully fast), but I am convinced that had Ben Franklin been Uruguayan, his famous quote would read that mate is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. So, when I come up to you with a strange looking cup filled with some steaming green stuff and a weird metal straw...drink up - you might just like it!