Tradición de Té Tremendo

Hondurans make tea. It used to be that when I thought of tea, I would think of looking at a selection of boxes all with artistic yet hopelessly foggy names (like Lavender Sunrise or Evening Breeze) and picking one, hoping that it would be good. Hondurans pick a spice or a fruit and throw it in boiling water for 5 minutes, add sugar, then serve. It’s the best tea I´ve ever had. My host mom makes tea with cloves, pineapple, cinnamon, rosemary, and probably a ton of other things. I recently bought some spices so I could make my own tea. I broke up a stick of cinnamon the other day fir tea and it ended up so rich with cinnamon, it was almost black. Then I scraped some of a block of La Campa processed dulce de caña (sugar cane) into my tea. ¡Que rrrrico, va!

I´ve been reading a bunch of the Biblioteca del Campo books at the CASM library, books to educate campesinos on food production and appropriate technology. One of the books is on medicinal plants, what plants are good for what pain and what parts of the plant to use in the medicinal tea. While I am clueless about what 95% of the plants I see around La Campa are, I can still appreciate how wonderful it is to be surrounded by a tradition that knows, uses, and makes tea out of its plants.