Clove sticks and stems that is! 
I just came up from working out and I saw one of my buddies at the front desk. He was sitting down checking out this large pile of brown stuff. I said hello and walked on over and he asked me if I knew what it was he was picking through. I told him I had no idea and he told me that he had a big pile of cloves and the sticks and stems they grow on sitting in front of him. Cloves are actually the flowers of a plant if some of you didn't know. He picked one of the flowers out and gave it to me and yes they were cloves indeed. However, I had never seen cloves in their natural form before. I am used to seeing them in little bottles or sticking out of holiday hams. These cloves were probably less than a week old straight from his 8 acres of spice farm in the hill country towards the center of the island. It was amazing to see where these little culinary zingers get their start. I say that they are zingers because when I ate one of them it numbed my mouth and tasted a little like cough syrup towards the back of my throat. He told me that the cloves are quite a profitable crop as westerners buy them to get the oil out of them and use it in the manufacturing of winter clothes. In addition, the cloves have a very big medicinal application here in Sri Lanka. Evidently they are very much into remedios as they use the cloves as ways to cope with the cold weather. Evidently if you eat about 2-3 cloves it will help you maintain a higher body temperature which will help you stay warm. He also mentioned that if you have an upset stomach you can eat a nutmeg and it will calm all of your problems. He also mentioned a cup of coffee with some fresh lemon juice but I do not remember which malady he said this was good for. At any rate, he was so nice to even offer me some of all of the things he grows. He told me he would be happy to give me a kilo of his fresh pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and other great things. I think I am going to have to ship these things as I don’t have faith that I could get all of these items through customs. I will be sure to introduce him to the chile I make this weekend since I received a shipment from NM just this week. I think I am going to blow his mind since I have a much higher tolerance for hot food than the folks here. Don’t get me wrong, the people of Sri Lanka are no slouches when it comes to eating spicy food. However, as New Mexicans we hold the crown of spicy food the world over. I am quite sure of this and I have a proof. For example, at our meals for our trainings they have a big bin just for fired red chilies. These are the crazy red oriental chilies that have a fair number of seeds in them. I pile these on my plate like crazy and the people at the table are always looking at me in amazement as I take a big bite of one with each spoonful of food.
Que viva Nuevo Mexico! 