You put what in your tea?

The North American continent has held some surprises. So did this website when I opened my post and found that all my pictures were gone! I had a grey oval with a minus sign in the middle of them in their place. Sigh. Good thing I don't delete my pictures right away. Now I have to go find them again. Also, adding the pictures back in is totally messing up the formatting, so sorry if the post looks a little weird.

I have found a couple of "different" tea recipes. They start out pretty standard, then add an unexpected twist. Guatemala was one such place. It is also referred to being in Central America, so it depends on how you want to split things up. It shares a border with Mexico and Belize to the north, and Honduras and El Salvador to the south. Sadly, one of the things I remember about Guatemala was a show I heard on NPR in college talking about how the CIA really got started by starting the guerrilla war in Guatemala. Peace came in 1996, and elections have been held ever since then.
The country has 4 distinct regions, a string of 27 volcanoes in the south, a fertile plain 25-30 miles wide, high mountain ranges, and a chunk of the limestone platform shared with Mexico and Belize.

When I was researching tea, the recipes started out pretty normal with ginger and cinnamon. Then an additional ingredient was added for a twist.

Do you see the surprise ingredient?

Yes, garlic.

Okay, so garlic was added if you wanted more of a medicinal brew. I decided I might as well give it a try. Garlic and ginger are related after all...

The garlic clove is hiding near the front edge of the pan. The instructions say to simmer 20-40 minutes. I don't remember exactly how long I simmered this, but I did give it a try.




To be honest, I didn't really taste much garlic when I took a drink. The garlic came out after drinking it. I could see how people might like this if they were sick. It would also make a good base for a garlicky ginger soup. It was an interesting addition to a common type of tea.

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