Morocco - mint tea

I like mint tea.  It is my second favorite tea after chamomile tea.  I had read that Moroccans drink a lot of mint tea.  They really do, or at least we were served a lot of mint tea, while we were there.  Our guide Mohammed said several times that it is good for digestion.

Obviously waiters love to show off pouring the tea and here was our first example of this.  Whenever we were served tea, it was usually in a pretty small glass and several places we were able to get it unsweetened, although usually it was sweetened or served with multiple cubes of sugar.

I almost bought some mint leaves to bring back to make tea, since I really liked this tradition. Obviously Moroccans have for thousands of years served and consumed mint tea.  Every house we visited had the tray of glasses ready to be poured.  I don't think we ever finished a meal, without the mint tea.  When we were being shown rugs made in Morocco, the men there walked us through the entire process of making mint tea.  Part of the reason to pour it from a height, it to cool off the tea.  In fact, I watched a man in a restaurant with a single serving of tea and he poured his from a height.  At first I thought that with the heat I would not like to drink the hot tea, but in the two weeks there, I grew to love this wonderfully centering ritual.

Our guide had to be very diplomatic, when he knew we should not be drinking the tea a few places.  One time in the semi-nomadic tent in the dessert, he knew we should not drink it, so he said we had just had some.  The nomads put away their already prepared tray at that point.  Little rituals like this were precious and became more so as they were repeated continually during our time in Morocco.  I just might plant some mint and use fresh mint instead of my tea bags for my evening tea in the future.