This everyone is malabar spinach.
Which was very kindly sent to me by Caleb. So Caleb, thank you. Thank you so much.
Malabar spinach is something that I've seen and it's available at Indian markets.
People use this to make curries, I believe
mostly in Southwest India.
You could also use it like you would use normal spinach.
And it tastes...
like spinach as well. I'd say it's like a cross between
spinach and lettuce.
It's got like a little bit more of
that sort of flavor like butter lettuce and the texture on it.
It's a little bit hardier than just regular spinach or lettuce.
The stems on it...
also edible.
But probably best when you eat it when it's a little bit smaller than this. You want it to be tender. However,
the leaves, the stems - I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in
the fruit. These things produce a fruit that - well, these ones are a little bit unripe.
But they ripen into these glorious little berries here. These are very, very dark
berries. These purple berries are used to make dye. People use these to dye
I think they might actually use it for clothing and things like that, but it's also used as a food
dye, so you can put this in like jello desserts and other sort of like cakes and stuff like that.
So that is I believe how it's typically used. Some people use it as a medicine as well.
There is not a whole lot of information, however, on the edibility of these berries.
However, Caleb says that he's eaten them and he's fine. I've looked online and saw a few references of people eating this thing - also surviving.
So I think it's fine.
But, you know, use caution if you have this thing growing or if you see it. You know,
don't eat just like buckets of them just in case, you know, it does have some toxicity to it, you know, everything you eat has
some level of toxicity. It's all about dosage. So this one I'm fairly certain
is fine in a small amount. But if you eat a whole bunch of it, maybe it'll cross the line.
I'm not too sure.
But I feel fairly confident that I'm going to be okay
if I just try a little bit of this, besides the fact it'll probably dye my tongue purple.
So I'm just going to pull some of these off and they don't separate super easily
from the stem and they're fairly firm, even though they look like they're like little blueberries.
Little misshapen cloud shaped blueberries.
They are a little bit firm.
They're not super succulent. Putting my hand up so you can see it because my black shirt is
not the best background to a black fruit.
Just touching it on the outside, it is getting dye on my fingers, but if you crush this thing,
yeah, it's like super, super dark in there.
It's all deceptive.
Because that looks like it's going to taste like a sweet
blueberry or something, but it tastes like a vegetable and
definitely will turn my mouth purple.
It tastes a little bit like the spinach but also with the flavor of beets. It has a strong
earthy red kind of flavor, the way that beets have that flavor. A little irony maybe.
It's full of these little black seeds and these little black seeds I believe are not edible.
I mean they might be but if something in this berry is going to be poisonous, it would be that seed.
So I'm going to avoid it. However, people do use this for it’s oil. They will
crush these to get the dye out and then use the seeds as a, I believe,
for cosmetics or skin care and stuff like that, it can be used. The berries;
spinachy
beety.
So tastes like spinach beet salad, maybe a little bit like beet greens.
That would be a good way to describe it. But unlike beets, they're not sweet. They're not sweet at all. This is
fairly innocuous. It's not sweet. It's not sour. It doesn't have a whole lot of flavor. Just a little bit of an earthiness.
So if you wanted to use this for it’s dye purposes,
to flavor
food items or maybe dye your socks or something - probably totally fine for that.
But eating it out of hand, you're not gonna want to do that. If you want to use this for
health benefits,
I'm not qualified to talk about that guys, but if these do have
polyphenols and all that stuff because they are a purple fruit, it would be totally fine
taking it that way. But if you're going after flavor,
I would give it a pass. Not really tasting all that good,
The spinach is definitely a better part of the plant if you want to eat it.
However does have it uses. So that is totally cool. So, thank you again
to Caleb for sending that to me and thanks everyone for watching.
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