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Let's share a matecito
Mate comes from the Quetcha word “mati” meaning gourd. It was the Spanish conquerors who gave the drink this name, the natives called it “caiguá”, meaning “something that has to do with yerba”.
Mate is also known by other names like tea of the Jesuits, tea from Paraguay and tea of the missionaries.
Legend
According to an ancient Guaranì legend the therapeutic properties of Mate would have been handed down directly by a god. The Guaranì, had settled in the forests of Paraguay coming from a “place far away” over the ocean. When they got to the new land, the god Pa’ i Shume, tall, with beautiful skin, blue eyes and with a beard, is said to have descended from the heavens to give the people religious teachings and reveal the beneficial properties of the plants of the area, in particular the yerba mate.
Properties
Mate is a plant with some of the highest nutritional values in the world. It seems to contains all the vitamins necessary for the human body. And a substance contained in mate, commonly know as “mateina”, seems to make it a healthy and efficient substitute to tea or coffee.
The energetic power of mate means it has excellent effects on the metabolism of which it seems to be an efficient natural accelerative.
And in the Andes mate is considered an excellent remedy to siroche, or mountain sickness.
Preparation
To prepare mate in the traditional way you first need to place two teaspoons of sugar inside a gourd (kungulli) and add a piece of red-hot carbon (fingjilli) to flavor the container; then you put in the bombilla, a special straw that has a filter at the bottom and you add mate to the edge and two teaspoons of sugar. Then you need to “cebar mate”, that is add very hot (not boiling) water as needed: the drink is then ready. You can also prepare mate without sugar: in this case it is called amargo.
A different way of preparing mate is that of mate concido: there are prepared filters that you can buy to make mate in the same way as you would tea.
There is also the tereré version: mate served in very cold water with, in some cases, ice and lemon.
How to drink mate
Mate is a drink that is consumed in company. In whatever context you find yourself, from family to professional. The tradition is that of tornarse en ronda: just one gourd is passed among those present by the cebador, who drink using the same bombilla. Simply add more hot water when the drink finishes.
(20/10/2005)
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