- Well, I have here today, the buffalo gourd.
And this is one of those episodes
where I'm gonna say to you right now
don't do this, you know, take this as an educational video.
Because I've been seeing a lot of conflicting information
on whether or not this thing is edible.
Some websites say flat out fruits are not edible.
Other ones say that you can eat it,
but there's a lot of rules.
- [Man] Fresh, young gourds can be eaten like squash
but once they mature, they're no longer edible
due to bitter compounds that they get.
- I mean, if you do you want to eat it,
do a lot of research and blame somebody else
if you get poisoned, don't blame me.
This was sent to me, by the way, by Rowan.
So Rowan, thank you very much.
The best resource that I found
for finding anybody saying that you can eat this
is Pfaf or pfaf.org, I believe.
It's a really great site
if you want to find out information
on the edibility of fruits.
And even that one, they're a little hazy with things.
They say that you can eat the seeds of this.
But even then, it says the seeds are used ground and mixed
into like, cakes and biscuits or used to thicken soups.
Doesn't really give you a whole lot of confidence
of just eating a handful of seeds.
And, it also says that the fruit,
when it is unripe, can be cooked and used as a vegetable.
This is unripe.
This is not a ripe one.
So, supposedly the flesh on this
is edible when it's like this.
But, there are a lot of resources online
that also say, don't touch this thing,
it is poison.
- It's really not edible.
I've tried to eat these guys before,
they're very bitter.
- Another thing that is very interesting
about this one is that it contains saponins.
Saponins are a natural soap.
So, in the past I talked about certain fruits that had this
like the soapberry has saponins it,
a lot of saponins and I tasted some
and it tasted a lot like soap.
And you can actually like clean your laundry,
clean your hands with it.
I'm not sure if it needs to be ripe or not,
but I'll see if I can wash my hands with it too,
while we're at it.
Let's find out.
(knife clinks) (man grunts)
So, there's the inside.
There is really not a lot of flesh.
Although people say you can eat this when it's unripe,
there's not much there to eat.
There's like a teeny, little bit of flesh on the outside,
but that's about it.
It smells like a gourd, you know.
Like, vegetabley, squashy.
I definitely think you can't eat this raw
but I'm just going to taste
like a teeny bit just to see what it's like.
Oh yeah, no, no, no.
You don't want to eat that.
(Man laughs)
Oh.
Yeah, I'm gonna rinse out my mouth.
I'll tell you what that tastes like in a second.
Ever just go under your kitchen cabinet,
grab like a bottle of something
without even like looking at it
and just taking a swig of it?
That's what that tastes like.
It tastes what I imagined poison tastes like.
So, when people say you shouldn't eat this thing
they're onto something.
I think even cooking this
is probably not going to do anything.
But, let's find out.
There are a lot of resources online
that are conflicting about this.
So, let me see if maybe that's what it takes.
I'm going to cook this thing
and then all that flavor of chemical will go away,
kind of doubt it though.
I think this is inedible guys.
I'm going to boil them like a squash.
So, probably like five minutes or so,
until they start to turn translucent.
(water bubbles)
You may notice a lot of bubbles,
that is because this has soap in it.
(man laughs)
This is not going to taste good.
It's lathering up as I boil it.
(tense music)
Oh, no, no, no, no.
(fork clinks)
Don't eat it.
Eh, I had to rinse out my mouth again.
Yeah, tastes exactly the same.
It's not any better.
No, you do not want to eat on ripe buffalo gourds.
All that information online,
where people are saying that you can eat it,
it's not true.
I mean, maybe there's some way of preparing this
that'll be okay.
Or maybe I'm doing something wrong.
But, that is an unripe buffalo gourd
and it tastes like it's going to kill me.
So, it's not so great as a fruit,
but how is it as a soap?
(water splashes)
Rinse my hands a bit with just water,
see how that feels.
It feels wet.
Now what about, I just take some of this.
It feels a bit like I'm washing my hands with soap.
It's not like sticky or, or anything.
It's got like a little bit of a slickness to it.
It doesn't really work up a lather,
but it does do something.
There's one problem with it though,
and that is makes your hands taste like chemicals.
Even though I've rinsed my hands off pretty well,
it imparts that chemical into your fingers.
So, if you're going to clean cutlery with that,
it's going to make your food taste like chemicals.
So, maybe not the best thing for that sort of use.
Maybe it'd be okay
for cleaning laundry or cleaning yourself,
like, if you're in a survival sort of situation.
But, it's not a really good soap.
So, I'm feeling like a little bit, like it's doing something
but not as much as other things I've used
like the soapberry,
that one actually got like a little lather going.
(upbeat music)
So, this cat here that just built up an appetite
because she knocked out all those gourds.
I had them in a bag on the floor.
And she just like knocked them all out
of this plastic bag here and now they're everywhere.
So, although you can't really eat these things,
you wouldn't really want to eat them.
Probably don't want to make soap out of them.
They do make really good cat toys.
She sought them out and they are now hers.
(man laughs)
(bag rustles)
Okay, so, some time has passed since I filmed that last clip
of video that you just watched.
Right after I finished filming that,
I got an email from a blog,
Pull Up Your Plants, pullupyourplants.com.
And Kevin over at Pull Up Your Plants was just like,
"Hey, do you need any help researching anything?"
And I was just like, "Well, actually, coincidentally
I just happened to be confused over buffalo gourds."
Because I don't know if you can really eat them.
I see conflicting information.
Do you know anything about buffalo gourds?
And he's like, yeah, I got them in my backyard.
So first off he said,
"Yeah, you probably shouldn't eat these things unripe,"
and that he's never heard of anyone eating them unripe.
The only uses that he's seen for this
is for getting rid of pests.
He said that he actually took some of the flesh of this
and blended it up and sprayed it on his plants.
And it kept locusts away that were eating his plants.
And my favorite piece of information that he gave me
is that you can eat the seeds on this thing,
or at least he ate the seeds on this and didn't die.
However,
you don't eat the seeds on one that looks like this.
You actually want these things
when they are completely dried out.
And, he was kind enough to send me some.
So, when you take this and you let it ripen all the way
and dry out, it will look like this.
Turns a different color, it weighs nothing,
like all of the water in there has evaporated,
and it's all dried out.
I am going to prepare and eat the seeds on this.
But, before I do that,
I do want to talk about one other for this thing.
And probably the most common use for this thing,
Christmas ornaments.
- [Woman] As a source of food,
the gourd may be cooked like squash
when it is young and the seeds may be roasted
or ground into meal when the gourd browns.
I pick them to dry and decorate.
Since painting gourds with my granny,
I have loved their versatility and beauty.
And these are perfect for crafting.
- That's a pretty cute thing to do.
So, I am going to eat the seeds on it, but first-
(Christmas music)
(record scratches)
So I painted it to look like an unripe buffalo gourd.
(gourd crackles)
(knife clinks)
Hmm. Yeah.
So, that's dried out to nothing.
There's just like this very fibrous,
little cobweb of flesh in there.
But, amongst that, seeds.
So, let's sift through all of this.
(plastic clatters)
(gourd rustles)
So, this is kind of a tedious thing to do.
It's not exactly easy to get these out,
because this material is just like,
so knotted, you've got like this little rat nest
of fiber here.
But, it's coming.
It is definitely not as bad
as some more difficult to extract seeds,
like that of the Osage orange.
But yeah, still pretty rough.
Okay, so here we have it.
I managed to separate out-
It wasn't actually that hard.
What I found helps is that, just from doing this a lot,
is if you take this little fluffy stuff
full of seeds in your hands and you like rub it together,
like this, the seeds come out without too much trouble.
The problem with that is you're left
with a bunch of fiber mixed in.
So, what I did is I went through
and I picked out all the large pieces.
And now there's still little bits of flesh
all throughout here.
Which, I mean, you can go through
and pick out every like little, tiny, microscopic,
little piece
or you can cheat by putting it in a colander.
I don't know that this is going to work,
but I'm thinking it will.
(seeds rattle)
Believe it or not I haven't done this before.
But, I'm going to kind of like, agitate these
that way is the little bits of soapy flesh
will go through.
Remember, the flesh on this is full of saponins.
So, if you don't get all that flesh off,
then the seeds are going to taste like soap.
Yeah, it's working.
I got a lot of it out,
but there are still more like stringy little bits
that wouldn't go through the holes of the colander.
Another thing that you can do
is, what you can do with like coffee,
and just like blow the chaff out.
(man coughs)
(guitar music)
I don't know if you can see it or not.
It does actually get some of that out.
I'm going to have to sweep after this.
(man coughs)
Just inhaled a piece.
(seeds rattle)
Still soapy be by the way.
Drying it out doesn't get rid of that soapiness.
And I've got some water here, let's give them a rinse also.
And, as you can see
there are little soap bubbles popping up.
So yeah, still soapy.
So, I'm going to do my best to get all of this off.
(water splashes)
Probably going to have to strain this out a few times.
God, this thing is just a nightmare to do.
It took forever and you know,
still, it didn't get all of it.
I got as much as I could possibly deal with
without losing my mind.
Anyway, I'm going to lay this out on a paper towel.
That way it can just like dry out a little bit.
All right.
Well, here they are.
I did the best I could.
And, what I'm going to do now
is take a little bit, oil
and a little pinch of salt,
(seeds rustle)
and sprinkle them a baking sheet.
And in they go at 350 degrees for, I dunno.
Okay, It's been about 10 minutes and these things are done.
Don't know if these are going to be good or not.
Don't really have high hopes.
I'm going to start with, what is that?
Eight of them.
(seeds crunch)
(man retches)
Oh, no, mm mm.
Maybe I didn't clean them properly.
I mean, I tried,
(man laughs)
I really tried.
Hm.
The initial taste is fine.
The initial taste is sunflower seeds.
You know, nothing too crazy.
It's a flavor that you get a lot from different fruit seeds,
it's almost identical to, also the Osage orange.
But, there's an aftertaste that's really bad.
And that after taste is like bitter soap.
It's not as strong as the flesh, thankfully.
It's just, you know, barely there, but it is there.
I wonder if maybe this is something that can be processed
in a way that would get rid of that soapiness, you know.
Like, Native Americans did eat the seeds.
And I'm imagining that maybe they did something
like they would do like with acorns.
Native Americans-
To take the tannins out of acorns,
they would put them in like a cloth sack
and they'd throw them in a river
and then the water would rush through the acorns
and slowly leech out all the tannins.
Just brilliant.
Me putting that in a bowl and swishing it around it,
I mean I'm sure it helped a lot,
putting it through a strainer,
I'm sure that helped.
You know, picking off manually
and blowing it up into the air
and like everything that I did to get that soapiness out
of there, I think did do something, but probably not enough.
I'd say this thing needs to be like put in a river
or like under like rushing water for like days.
And then maybe you can dry it out and roast it
and it won't taste like soap.
But, it tastes like soap.
So, I think that's all I have to say
about the buffalo gourd.
Once again thank you so much to Rowan
for initially sending these to me
and Kevin over at Pull Up Your Plants
for giving me more information
and sending me more of them.
And yeah, I'll see you all next time, goodbye.
I would like to give this shout out to Smarter Every Day,
alt. Pod and the Harbor Leaf Tea Company,
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Thanks so much guys, bye bye.