Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'can i eat this?'.
Found 1 result
-
I was just rearranging some of my plants and remembered this agave, It needed a bit of a trim to fit it the spot where I was going to put it, so I sliced off a leaf. It looked kind of nice, like the inside of a white sapote, so i smelled it, no smell.. So I sliced off the thick skin.. ..Needless to say I got curious and cut off a little of the flesh to taste it.. Not bad! Not bad at all! Not really much flavour, almost a bit like a cucumber or a very mild-tasting melon, but juicy and refreshing. Now I know its probably bad form to go chewing on random plants before researching, but I figured if I can have agave syrup on my pancakes, I can probably eat a bit of the stem. So I looked it up on wikipedia, and it turns out (some?) agave are edible: "There are four major parts of the agave that are edible: the flowers, the leaves, the stalks or basal rosettes, and the sap (in Spanish: aguamiel, meaning "honey water").[8]" Yeah! Honey water is a perfect description of the taste! The plant which I ate was given to me as a small rosette off an absolutely giant agave, the thing was honestly 3-4 metres wide and 2-3 metres tall. If this is a palatable, food producing plant, shouldn't we all be growing them!!? "But the miracle of nature was the great Mexican aloe, or maguey, whose clustering pyramids of flowers, towering above their dark coronals of leaves, were seen sprinkled over many a broad acre of the table-land. As we have already noticed its bruised leaves afforded a paste from which paper was manufactured, its juice was fermented into an intoxicating beverage, pulque, of which the natives, to this day, are extremely fond; its leaves further supplied an impenetrable thatch for the more humble dwellings; thread, of which coarse stuffs were made, and strong cords, were drawn from its tough and twisted fibers; pins and needles were made from the thorns at the extremity of its leaves; and the root, when properly cooked, was converted into a palatable and nutritious food. The agave, in short, was meat, drink, clothing, and writing materials for the Aztec! Surely, never did Nature enclose in so compact a form so many of the elements of human comfort and civilization!" I have developed alot more respect for agaves in the last half and hour! Has anyone else eaten agave, or heard of it being eaten?