This reminds me of the paw paw (not to be confused with the papaya which Australians call pawpaw) https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/09/15/550985844/th... It's a fruit that seems tropical, a close relative of the custard apple or sitaphal that tastes like a pina colada. Yet it grows natively all over the eastern US. It's so common that in many places it's every third tree in the forest.
I grew up in peak pawpaw country (Cincinnati), got a thorough outdoors education via boy scouts, and never learned about the existence of this incredible plant. Nobody knows about it! The day after I learned about it, I could walk a few feet into the woods in a park in the middle of the city, shake a tree and come out with tropical tasting fruit, and yet people walk by this tree every day oblivious. Mind-boggling.
Pawpaws have very inconsistent harvests, don't ship well at all, and have a very short ready to eat -> overripe time.
They are also, like you note, absolutely delicious. I have two trees in my backyard. (You need two for them to pollinate and bear fruit.) But there are practical reasons why you don't see them for sale very often.
Sadly, that whole genus contains neurotoxins. I'm not sure the medical evidence is in on pawpaw's, but soursop is responsible for high rates of atypical Parkinson's in areas where it's a staple.
South Africans also call papaya pawpaw. Wikipedia says the name is colour related:in Australia, these are called "red papaya" and "yellow papaw". In SA I only saw yellow.
Come to southeast Ohio and you will see that pawpaws are far from forgotten. Bumper stickers on cars are common and there's even a Pawpaw Festival each September.
I LOVE paw paws. I used to eat them all the time as a kid when I’d visit Kentucky. You can buy saplings online, but I’ve never had any success growing them in my area.
I ate a paw paw once, and since then I've been trying to find a definitely identified paw paw tree so I can recognize them in the wild. The fruit was so delicious and the seeds were really interesting and unique. If any of you are willing to show me a paw paw tree in person, please shoot me an email.
I just learned about these last year from a coworker. I still have a way too old one in a ziploc bag in the fridge, because I was suppose to try and grow a seedling.
Go nearly anywhere in Argentina and you will find mate. People walk around with a thermos of hot water and sip all day. It is a shared cultural experience too like saying hello. You see a friend, greet them, then offer them some mate.
Our SF-based company has an office in Mendoza, Argentina. You will not find baristas and coffee (though Starbucks just opened there), but plenty of mate for everyone. Due to this connection, we have plenty of supplies for mate in the office, but it is still not as commonly adopted here as coffee.
"Mate", not "maté". I guess it's cool to add random accents to foreign words to make them look more exotic, but this changes the pronunciation of the word and in fact turns into a different one.
"Mate" refers to "yerba mate" (as in the article) or even the gourd used to consume it; it's also a common abbreviation of "jaque mate", "checkmate". "Maté", on the other hand, means "I killed".
For what it's worth, Wikipedia includes this explanation:
> "In English, "mate" is occasionally written "maté", to distinguish it from other meanings of the word mate, although this spelling is not used in Spanish or Portuguese."
A similar example is "résumé", so as to not be confused with "resume".
Going further down the Wikipedia hole, here's a page describing use of diacritics in English, which includes a subsection on "Accent-addition and accent-removal":
The accent isn't there to make it look exotic, it's there to clarify the pronunciation. English steals é from French, not Spanish. Without the accent it wouldn't be obvious that it's supposed to be an ae diphthong. (Obviously it's still non-obvious, but it's a reasonable spelling.)
I love both coffee and tea. Both caffeine drinks yet they taste nothing like one another. If it's a drink to have with food it has to be tea. For a waker upper it's coffee. At other times it's a toss up. I'd love to try this cassina be a while before we see it in Europe I'd imagine
Another obscure-ish tea that is seems to be gaining popularity is guayusa (mostly being pushed under the brand Runa). It is another holly from warm regions, I think from rainforests in South America. I'm a big fan of the moderate caffeine content and the ability to steep it for long periods to get more caffeine out of it, without it getting bitter. It is amazing as a summer/warm weather high-caffeine iced tea. You can buy in loose tea form by the pound from Amazon for about $20.
Guayusa is great. We're pretty jealous of the size of their leaves compared to yaupon leaves. Yaupon, guayusa and yerba mate are all in the Ilex genus, they're the three known caffeinated hollies (or more accurately the three known hollies with appreciable levels of caffeine)
The other day a barista offered me a tea made from the berries/cherries that coffee beans grow inside. It was delicious, but so caffeinated that I felt like I was on drugs all afternoon.
I have tried youpon tea at a cafe before and even purchased it here: https://lostpinesyaupontea.com. I like Yerba Mate quite well, so I wouldn’t say youpon in better, but I would say I like it equally well. It’s definitely worth a try.
i tried yerba mate in an an automatic drip coffee maker with some cream and sugar and i was blown away by the energy i got from it. there was no caffeine crash. it was a sustained energy. it takes a while to kick in so u gotta drink it first thing in morning. u can find some popular bags of it on amazon. it has to be the loose leaf stuff, not the individual bags. i think i tried Taragui Yerba Mate Con Palo. but there are other brands that are just as good.
i spent a while in argentina and they drink it down there with the gourds. it's interesting. we would be in a meeting and someone would start passing around a gourd and each person would drink from the same gourd during a business meeting. that person would refill it with hot water from a thermos and pass it to the next guy.
Yerba mate[0] has 2 stimulants aside from caffeine: theophylline and theobromine. Perhaps they interact in such a way as to stabilize the effect of the caffeine.
I bought some from a random site[1] that turned up when I searched duckduckgo for "cassina tea" because Amazon didn't return any results for cassina. Lots for yaupon, but that came farther down the article.
Postum[1] might be the opposite. Coffee for Mormons that didn't want to break the rules. I tried it, and it was awful. But ask any Mormon you know, and they usually at least know what it is.
Today most Mormons drink Diet Coke instead (which I can say tongue in cheek as a Mormon sipping a Diet Coke.) I've never tried Postum myself, heard of it though.
Curiously what the Mormon code of health actually prohibits is 'hot drinks' which would include Postum (but not Diet Coke!) But historically it has been interpreted to mean Coffee and Tea (and any drink derived from Coffee beans or Tea leaves, hot or cold.)
I just found 3 oz for 13$, but thats still 17 times as expensive as Yerba Mate. I guess I might try it just for the novelty, but it's gonna take a serious agricultural effort to make this a viable product.
I love yerba mate. My family traveled to Argentina when I was a kid and I remember we were delayed for about 4 hours before our flight back home late in the night. I kept making myself yerba mate teas while the lounge had the movie Screamers playing on an old CRT tv. It was foundationally terrifying to a deeply-wired and awake 10 year old kid.
As a teenager I found a seller selling it on Amazon in bulk, I bought 3 kilos of it and my friends all joked that I was buying 'kilos from South America', but that tea lasted me years.
As an adult I found that brewing it in a drip coffee maker seemed to pull out more of the chemicals that woke you up and I had a period of my college years where my grades shot up from how productive I got.
I didn't find that drinking it from a gourd quite had the same effect as brewing it in an automatic drip coffee maker. The first time I tried this, I drank a few cups at around noon. That night I found myself wide awake at 3 am.
The (probably apocryphal) story I heard in botany class was that men competed to see who could chug the most hot tea before vomiting. Going to school in Tallahassee, FL, it was heartwarming to imagine that even 500 years ago, men were sitting around shouting “chug, chug, chug!” At each other
I stopped drinking coffee a month ago due to some minor circulation problems. I do miss the taste and still get tempted from time to time, but I have to say that I’ve never felt more awake
[+] [-] moultano|8 years ago|reply
I grew up in peak pawpaw country (Cincinnati), got a thorough outdoors education via boy scouts, and never learned about the existence of this incredible plant. Nobody knows about it! The day after I learned about it, I could walk a few feet into the woods in a park in the middle of the city, shake a tree and come out with tropical tasting fruit, and yet people walk by this tree every day oblivious. Mind-boggling.
[+] [-] Baeocystin|8 years ago|reply
They are also, like you note, absolutely delicious. I have two trees in my backyard. (You need two for them to pollinate and bear fruit.) But there are practical reasons why you don't see them for sale very often.
[+] [-] gbrown|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmgrosen|8 years ago|reply
Hopefully recent trends of farmers' markets and such will increase the availability!
[+] [-] hordeallergy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heymijo|8 years ago|reply
https://www.ohiopawpawfest.com/
[+] [-] innocentoldguy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LostPinesYaupon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|8 years ago|reply
I’ve seen quite a few pawpaw trees in backyards, but it’s defi an under appreciated fruit here too.
Dried sugar dusted pawpaw is flipping amazing.
[+] [-] n2dasun|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abakker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ppierald|8 years ago|reply
Our SF-based company has an office in Mendoza, Argentina. You will not find baristas and coffee (though Starbucks just opened there), but plenty of mate for everyone. Due to this connection, we have plenty of supplies for mate in the office, but it is still not as commonly adopted here as coffee.
[+] [-] ggambetta|8 years ago|reply
"Mate" refers to "yerba mate" (as in the article) or even the gourd used to consume it; it's also a common abbreviation of "jaque mate", "checkmate". "Maté", on the other hand, means "I killed".
[+] [-] grzm|8 years ago|reply
> "In English, "mate" is occasionally written "maté", to distinguish it from other meanings of the word mate, although this spelling is not used in Spanish or Portuguese."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate
A similar example is "résumé", so as to not be confused with "resume".
Going further down the Wikipedia hole, here's a page describing use of diacritics in English, which includes a subsection on "Accent-addition and accent-removal":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_terms_with_diacritical...
[+] [-] lukeschlather|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] barking|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|8 years ago|reply
Since it's a dried leaf similar to tea or mate you can probably get it shipped from the US, though I expect the postage will be somewhat expensive.
Look for "yaupon" or "yaupon tea" as, as the article notes that's how it's called/marketed these days.
[+] [-] cratermoon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] a012|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philg_jr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LostPinesYaupon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] innocentoldguy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pfhreak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalacv|8 years ago|reply
i spent a while in argentina and they drink it down there with the gourds. it's interesting. we would be in a meeting and someone would start passing around a gourd and each person would drink from the same gourd during a business meeting. that person would refill it with hot water from a thermos and pass it to the next guy.
[+] [-] wunderlust|8 years ago|reply
[0] http://nativayerbamate.com/health.html (Nativa sells yerba mate so possible bias)
[+] [-] 1024core|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|8 years ago|reply
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/yaupon
How does one get the OED fix such an obvious error?
[+] [-] cratermoon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fellowniusmonk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threepipeproblm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwighttk|8 years ago|reply
[1]https://wildsouthtea.com/pages/about-cassina
[+] [-] tyingq|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postum
[+] [-] grahamburger|8 years ago|reply
Curiously what the Mormon code of health actually prohibits is 'hot drinks' which would include Postum (but not Diet Coke!) But historically it has been interpreted to mean Coffee and Tea (and any drink derived from Coffee beans or Tea leaves, hot or cold.)
[+] [-] dgacmu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tytytytytytytyt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smazga|8 years ago|reply
Unroasted, it's very grassy, but refreshing. The roasted variety I got tasted quite similar to mate. It's really good.
The biggest problem I have is that I can get a kilo of mate for $9, but 2 Oz of yaupon is in the $15-$20 range.
[+] [-] mixologic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoGravitas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmanfrin|8 years ago|reply
As a teenager I found a seller selling it on Amazon in bulk, I bought 3 kilos of it and my friends all joked that I was buying 'kilos from South America', but that tea lasted me years.
As an adult I found that brewing it in a drip coffee maker seemed to pull out more of the chemicals that woke you up and I had a period of my college years where my grades shot up from how productive I got.
[+] [-] dalacv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roflc0ptic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nopassion|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalacv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|8 years ago|reply