Most of your finer New Mexico mucilage is going to be found in cactus plants. Prickly pear pad inards can goo up nicely. There are the pointy succulents - not aloe vera but some smaller aloes. Yucca root does an unappealing but soapy, gooey thing.
My favorite mucilage image was from a video I watched of traditional kava kava preparation on some small Polynesian island. Now, kava kava isn’t mucilagenous. But the way they prepare it is to put chunks of the fresh kava root inside the long leaves of some succulent. The leaf is then folded tight around the kave and the whole shebang is pounded with a rock. When smooshy, the leaf is grabbed at each end (often by two people) and wrung out like a dirty sock. Gooey, drippy mucilage, carrying the wonderful soporific (mild) hallucinogen of the kava root streams down from the leaf like a three year old with a sinus infection.
My teacher, who was given some to drink, said that it was like drinking egg white, only it of course made your whole mouth totally numb (cause that’s what kava does.)
Interesting side note: apparently said island is only 50 miles or so across, but houses 4 distinct and once warlike tribes. They haven’t had a war in more than 200 years, because there’s an unwritten rule that when anyone gets pissed off at anyone else, they must take their dispute to the king along with a fresh kava root. The king makes kava snot for the three of them to drink together, and everyone gets so mellow on kava that they’re too friendly to stay mad at one another. The per capita kava consumption (man, woman and child) is over a cup of kava snot a day. It’s amazing there’s a single working liver on the island, really.
I have dropped these folks a note asking them the question and inviting them to answer on this thread.
(Their web site points out all of their marshmallows are hand-packed and hand-spattered. This give me a nice mental image. ‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m a marshmallow splatterer.’)
First-hand experience: I had traditionally prepared kava when I was in Fiji. Texture is like thin egg white, taste is like dirt. Makes your lips and tongue numb. No other effect.
Back in Germany now. No, Aseli don’t offer marshmallows made from real marshmallow plants. All their products are made of Schaumzucker (“foamed sugar”). They’re somewhat similar to Russian zefir.
I’m sorry that you still haven’t been able to find marshmallow marshmallows. That’s something I would also like to try.
If you want to get a feel for what marshmallow root tastes like, see if you can find some herbal tea that is just the root. You’ll quickly find out why they made candy out of it, it’s really sweet. I can eat a spoonful of sugar, but I couldn’t drink the full cup of tea.
Good idea. Looks like it’s possible to buy tisanes made from marshmallow leaves and marshmallow roots. I’ll see if any of the local health food shops or pharmacies here carry it. If not I suppose I can always buy it online.
Just want to add that, since the gelatin used to make traditional marshmallows comes from pigs and therefore is not kosher, the store I work in (certified kosher dairy) sells marshmallows that use kosher fish gelatin.