Moroccan Mint No. 1580

This was a fun tea tasting! Jim Marks suggested that I find out how traditional Moroccan Mint tea is made and served. I read a number of recipes and read how they pour from up high, filling a glass and pouring it back in to mix the sugar in well, and finally pouring from high up again to make a froth on the tea. I had the girls look on a map to see where Morocco is, look at the overall climate, and find movies that were shot in or set in Morocco. (Youngest is a huge Inception fan and was pretty excited about that one!) I described the tall, narrow tea glasses they use that are decorated in beautiful colors with gold filigree.

We poured our frothy tea and drank it. WOW! It has been a long time since I have had any tea with this much sugar in it, but it is DELICIOUS! I am amazed they drink this hot all year in Morocco, but it really is good and the mint is so cooling. They probably didn’t have refrigeration as a common option until recently! I think I like it even more hot than iced, too. (I had it iced at lunch with my banana sandwich.)

The article we read said that this is served to guests as a symbol of your hospitality and is served at least twice a day in most homes. A visitor in a gathering will be asked to judge who is the best tea maker among them. Now if that doesn’t sound like a bunch of Southern ladies gathered around serving their sweet tea to guests, I don’t know what does!

Thanks for the recommendation, Jim! This was fun, and I will definitely try serving it to guests this way in the future. I guess I have to go out and buy some of those gorgeous little glasses now! :)

I really love the spearmint and Egyptian mint in this, and I was disappointed to see that most companies use peppermint. I don’t know if I would like that as well, but I will certainly give it a try.

I had about five ounces of this left yesterday after drinking it hot and sweetened, iced, sharing it with hubby, and then making (and eating) three Zoku Popsicles with it. I am in love with Moroccan Mint and now I want those little glasses from Harney and Sons and maybe a bunch of other Moroccan glasses, too, because THEY ARE SO PRETTY!!!!

Sigh. On a happy note, I did discover that if I buy 250 grams at a time I will save a dollar.

Continuing my love affair with Moroccan Mint, I decided to share it with my bestie today after we had some Asian Pear from this same company. This is their own house blend of Moroccan Mint. Their gunpowder green base is smooth and not at all smokey. The spearmint is strong but not offensively so, indeed I love it!

Our experiment involved adding honey. I have had this plain and with sugar. When I was at Moo Mart (where we feel like cattle when we shop) I saw some raw mountain honey from the western part of our state. I wanted to try it in my MM.

We began with plain tea so my friend could get a clear taste of the tea. Then we added her Manuka honey from Bird Pick Tea and Herb. It was nice, but the honey flavor was definitely noticeable and different from adding sugar.

Next came the Moo Mart honey. When I opened it, I was really taken aback. It smelled like HORSE! Seriously, like horse!!! I thought mixing it with spearmint tea would dampen the horse completely down, but alas, when I lifted my cup it smelled like horse and the sip tasted a wee bit horsey. I love puerh, but come on. Horsey honey?

Next cup got raw sugar from Whole Foods, and that was the best of the sweetened cups. I think this is great plain, though, so I will probably only drink this when I want a cooling, sweet iced tea.

I was SO EXCITED! I got a phone call yesterday from someone wanting piano lessons for their child. I heard a beautiful accent, and was told she was referred to me by another student of mine, and right away I knew it was the Moroccan friend that I had been hearing about! As in, really, truly, Moroccan!

Naturally, I set out my Harney and Sons glasses and had a pot of tea ready! I told her that I didn’t know if this would be authentic to what she was used to, but I needn’t have worried. Ryan, you need to read this! :)

First she was ecstatic that we were going to have tea, second, she loved the glasses and said they made her feel like she was home again, and third, she said the tea was absolutely authentic to what she makes herself. She likes to add a tiny bit of honey to hers, and I gave her the White Gold honey that was recommended by my dear young friend who works at Teavana. She said it was the best honey she had ever had. Soon I will try some of the new honey from the newly added honey room at Tin Roof Teas! Yes, that’s right, they will have a HONEY ROOM!

This is what tea drinking is all about. Over and over, she beamed and told me how happy she was, how she loved the tea, how good it felt to drink tea and talk with someone (she is a homeschooling mom who is with children most of the time and loves to have some adult conversation now and then, just like me!), and how much she felt at home because of the tea, because of the glasses. She told me how she wanted to bring glasses from Morocco but didn’t for fear they would break, but that she brought all the serving pieces. She talked about how the tea tray would be set before the oldest person at a gathering and they would make the tea. There would be three containers for gunpowder green, spearmint, and sugar, and each person would come to the elder to be served. We talked about tea rituals here, and in China, and in Morocco. She wants to come again, and drink more kinds of tea. I will be seeing her once a week now for her daughter’s lessons, but I have a feeling there are also some plain ole’ tea parties in our future! This was a truly great tea day and I am so happy I could burst!

So after all the brewhaha (LOL!) last night with the transcript, I got up at six a.m. to get started again. Two hours later, testing the automatic GPA figuring, I put in a fake course and then erased it. But it refused to erase completely and left a “grade not available at this time” and refused to compute her final GPA. I tried to refresh the page to take it out and….took…out…everything…I had done. All of it. And I was finished.

YOUNGEST! I NEED TEA! Seeing my state, she asked if I needed Catherine, but I told her I thought I wanted Moroccan Mint instead. I can drink it hot or cold, plain or super sweet, and it’s good every whichaway.

Several cups later, the transcript is complete and printed, the FAFSA is done (twice because I didn’t see that I had clicked on the top item which was an ad for a company that makes you fill everything out yourself then charges you to file it for you so yes, we had to go to the right site and do it all over again sob sob sob) and now we can have LUNCH! If I was going to take up drinking, this would be the day.

Now to get the registration for school done and haggle with the insurance company over my son’s wisdom tooth extraction. Sigh.

There is no paperwork in heaven, save for the Lamb’s Book of Life. I bet I know what happens in hell…

After reading Dylan’s paeans to Moroccan Mint, I broke down and bought some at Tin Roof Teas. He was right about how indispensible it is for summertime! After trying it, I began a quest to find the one I would love best.

Today I had a face off between four teas from four different companies. Tin Roof Teas won for me because the gunpowder green base is smooth, not smokey, and supports the fresh, tingling spearmint flavor so beautifully. Perhaps there is something about the addition of Egyptian Mint that makes it sing for me, too. I do not really enjoy peppermint in tea. Much as spearmint, so that is a big factor in my choosing this one. If you love peppermint more, you would want to go with the Market Spice version. Serendipitea was next, and very close, while Teavana lagged seriously far behind.

Backlogging from yesterday: This is the tea that was the raison d’être for yesterday’s tea party.

My student mentioned during a lesson that she and her mother used to drink tea with a Moroccan lady who had moved back home, and said her mother really missed the fun they had. I invited them to come try some of my tea!

She said that the tea smelled identical to what her friend made, but her friend used fresh spearmint in hers so it may have been a little different. She seemed to really like it. I love it. I didn’t add anything at all to mine, but she and her daughter added White Gold honey and liked it.

I enjoy spearmint more than peppermint in my area and wanted to grow some, but by the time I got around to going to the nursery they we sold out. Maybe next year!

This was the final tea of tea party. My guest lifted her cup, sniffed, and blurted, “Wrigley’s Gum!” I told her she had a great nose because both are spearmint. She liked it a lot, and of course it is my favorite Moroccan Mint so far. We drink it sans additions.