Mortar and Pestle

I have a new obsession!  Just bought my first mortar and pestle.  I found information about the mortar and pestle while reading an herb gardening book (I’m such a geek LOL).  This year I plan to use my mortar and pestle to crush my herbs before cooking.  I was surprised to find that mortars and pestles have been used for many years (yet I’ve never noticed them until now).  While mortars and pestles were used for medicinal purposes thousands of years ago, the food related objective of a mortar and pestle is to make the smell and flavor of herbs more potent in food dishes.  After doing a little research, I learned that mortar and pestles date back to 1500 BC in Egypt and were even used in the Old Testament (Numbers 11:8 and Proverbs 27.22).  Mortars and pestles were traditionally used for pharmaceutical reasons to crush prescription drugs.  Reducing the particle size, also known as trituration, helps the stomach absorb and ingest medicines faster.  The pestle (derived from the Latin word pistillum, meaning pounder) is a baseball bat shaped instrument while the mortar (derived from the Latin term mortaium meaning receptable for pounding or grinding) is the bowl in which ingredients are ground and crushed.  In order for a mortar and pestle to work correctly, the material used to make the tool must be durable, cohesive, non-porous, stain-resistant, smooth and resilient.  A good mortar will not absorb the flavor of what was previously ground inside it and must resist the growth of microorganisms.  Mortars and pestles can be made out of many different substances:  hard wood, ceramic, stone, porcelain, glass, marble, bamboo, iron, steel, brass and basalt.  My mortar and pestle is made of granite, which I think is a very durable stone to use.  Mortars and pestles, although they have been replaced by more efficient automatic grinders, they are a universal tools used to make guacamole Hispanic cultures, pesto in Italian cultures, hummus in middle eastern cultures and a variety of dishes in Japanese and Indian cultures.  First things first, I plan to use it to crush my basil leaves for pesto and mint leaves for my mojitos and mint tea.