Every country puts its own twist on a large varieties of food; Iran likes to put ketchup on its pizza, the US for some reason enjoys water in its espresso americano, and someone, somewhere decided anchovies belonged on pizza. Well, Kyrgyzstan presented me with one such unusual combination, but it’s one that I’m telling you all that you absolutely MUST try at home: using fruit preserves as tea sweetener.

That sounds strange right? At first glance, taking a spoonful of homemade варенье and plopping it into a cup of hot black or green tea may sound strange. You’ll just have to trust me that this is not only a delicious modification that gets you truly natural fruit-flavored tea, but also one that I’ve found helps settle my stomach.

The recipe is simple: take a cup of green or black tea and mix in 1-3 teaspoons of natural fruit preserves. Raspberry, strawberry, blackberry… they all make great candidates, especially if they’re natural and made by hand in Kyrgyzstan. People here drink a lot of tea, and this is an easy way to mix up your tea flavors beyond just the ordinary colors.

When I first saw my host family doing this, I was shocked – I’d never even remotely thought of mixing anything other than honey or sugar into my tea (side note: the honey here is all natural and all DELICIOUS). They encouraged me to try it, and now I drink about a quarter of my tea with one of their homemade selections mixed in (I’m trying to drink most of it without sweeteners because I’ve got enough processed sugar in my diet as is and I’m fond of my teeth).

Also on the subject of tea, green tea here is called “blue” tea, as it is in many countries in this region, and we drink it on occasion.

If you try it and like it, let me know in the comments below!

UPDATE: Somehow, I overlooked that this very life hack actually appears in my favorite book series, His Dark Materials, while one of the characters is traveling to Central Asia from Siberia.  Props to Philip Pullman!