Why yerba needs mate

It might look like coffee, but there's a green hue in that brew

It occurred to me, that I have never really explained the blog's title.  Café is the Spanish word for coffee, and mate (pronounced mah-tay, not like an Australian buddy) is more or less the Argentine national beverage.  Dried leaves from a holly-like plant make up the herb (yerba), which is typically served with hot water in a hollowed-out gourd (calabeza).  Because the gourd is filled with leaves, a filter straw (bombilla) is used to prevent any prickly bits from traveling down your throat.

Bag of yerba and a silver mate

As Lonely Planet put it, Argentines and Uruguayans people carry their mates the way we tote around our Starbucks in the United States.  But unlike your favorite skinny caramel frappaccino, mate is a communal drink that is meant to be shared with friends, colleagues and even ESL teachers.  To say that mate is an acquired taste is an understatement.  Most nonnatives would rather drink swamp water than the bitter beverage, which I can only describe as green-tea-meets-smoked-tree-bark.  Call my taste buds tasteless, but I kind of enjoyed it, and so did a few other expats.  But then again, we liked fernet too.

The Yanqui way uses a tea ball

Before leaving Argentina I finally bought my own gourd (I had been mooching off my students) and stocked up on yerba.  But instead of investing in a sturdy, more modern vessel, I went for the traditional, decorative model.  Big mistake.

The paint has stained my fingers, and the inside of the gourd has given rise to a  bacterial jungle.  Apparently my knowledge of drinking mate does not extend to preparing it.  Today I decided to try an unconventional approach that would make a seasoned drinker cringe: I used two tea filters to make mate in a coffee mug.  It might be borderline blasphemous, but until I can find another calabeza, it's my best bet.