Hello, friends!

This is my first article in this community @thehiveherbal, greetings to all the friends here. And at this first time I would like to talk about melinjo, the authentic plant you could find easily in my country, Indonesia. The one that inspired me was my totally delicious dinner, in my language, Indonesian, the soup that I had for the dinner called sayur asem, or if it is translated to English it would be sour vegetable soup. In this dish, we always used the melinjo leaves and also melinjo fruits. Before talking about the tastiness of my dinner, I would like to trying a bit explain about this melinjo first.

Melinjo Tree

Melinjo is dioecious gymnosperm plant which can reach height of 22 meters with conical trunk and it harvested twice a year, usually between May – July and October – December.

Melinjo tree which already grown looked beautiful with its melinjo fruit in red, orange, yellow and green. The colour depends on the ripeness of the fruits, but I really love and prefer the young melinjo fruits cause they are softer and also not too bitter compared to the older fruits.

Referred to some trusted sources, the fruits of melinjo could increase anemia, the protein it has help eliminate free radicals that causes various diseases such as hypertension, high cholesterol, narrowing of blood vessels, premature aging and other serious disease. Plus the antioxidant it has is equivalent with what we could get from the vitamin C.Awesome!

Besides the fruits, usually we also consumed their leaves, flowers and also seeds. The seeds of it become our popular melinjo chips. The seeds of melinjo have a high nutritive value, including particular carbohydrate and protein, high antioxidant and antibacterial effects which are the same as polyphenol in red wine (resveratrol). So, the seeds also have ingredients that will make us healthier. Wow! Another fact of this plant we just found out :).

Melinjo Chips

These are how the popular melinjo chips looks like

We ate it as snacks to accompany our food.. or as snacks. It had original bitter but tasty flavour. You should try it. The above pictures showed when i ate them with my porridge and as my dinner companion, to be eaten with soto. How nice! Both mom and i are crazy for these melinjo chips..

And great thing is in Indonesia we could find the leaves and fruits of melinjo cooked together in a tasty sour vegetable soup. And like the name the soup has sour soup but don’t worry it also has sweet flavour so the combination between the sweet and sour made it really delicious.

Sour vegetables soup

The green ones in this soup was melinjo leaves, while the small green ones were the fruits. To consume the fruits you should open the skin, then find a harder part inside, cracked it then you could enjoy the melinjo fruits. I love its authentic sweet and bitter flavour.. Even I loved it since I was a child.

Inside the Melinjo fruits

Come and give melinjo a try to help you become healthier!
Next time here i would talk about some natural oils i used daily so stay tune..
Thanks for reading my article and Happy Friday!