Sage Tea

I go looking for more sage tea, since I can’t pick sage fresh in Crete’s high mountains as I did a few summers ago, the smell of the herb pungent as it gets trampled underfoot, the taste of it beyond delicious, made into tea in a copper briki, good for absolutely everything.

There’s puzzlement today, with everyone in Rose Market trying to figure out how to say “sage” in Farsi.  But in the end they find it and I buy a bag of silver or white sage, the kind the Navajos wrap with a length of colored thread, bind into smudges, whose slow smoke will purify a space, or celebrate a rite of passage.

I love that sage means wise; that sage is part of passage, message, presage.

At the market as well I buy a jar of sour cherry jam, and then kebabs of lamb grilled with spices, wrapped in lavash, with a generous handful of fresh mint, onion, and assorted parsleys on the side. The grilling lamb is not this afternoon sending a cloud of fragrant smoke into the winter air, but it still can't be resisted.

A young woman is squeezing a mound of pomegranates into juice near the front door.

So today’s treats—are multiple.

image:  Sage tea in a glass cup, Ottmar Diez