Learning Curve III

Hospitality here is very important.  How you serve your tea and coffee is a big part of that.  In order to do things right, I went to my neighbor's house.  We first met this particular neighbor about a week after we moved in to our apartment.  She is an elderly woman with four older children still living at home with her. Their family is well known in the area (previous generations used to own much of the land around us waaaay back in the day).  Anyway, when we met them outside their villa across the street from us, they invited us in for tea.  It was the best tea I  had tasted since I arrived.  So, of course, I wanted her to teach me how to make it.  

I arranged through her son (she doesn't speak ANY English) a time to meet together.  When I went over she took me in to her kitchen and began making her family recipe tea.  Right away, I found out why her tea tasted so good.  She used a tea kettle to make about 5-6 cups of tea.  She poured in the water, lit the gas stove, then added about a full cup of sugar to the pot.  I was surprised her teeth still looked so good.  

We let the water boil for a while, then she added in her special loose-leaf tea (a kind I haven't seen in any stores yet), a dried seed of some kind (?) and another pinch of, you guessed it, sugar.   After a few more minutes, we sat at her kitchen table, had our 'dessert' and spoke about the only thing I could muster in my limited arabic - fruits and vegetables.  

I'm not sure I could recreate her amazing tea. I'm not sure if I should make it very often and get used to drinking it every day.   We're thinking about serving our guests some Lipton.