If you can’t be recyclable, at least be biodegradable.

The first option is for reincarnationists. It’s dust to dust for the rest of us. Deep subject.

Oddly enough (I’m good at odd) it was this year’s quintessential Christmas gifts for hard-to-buy-for family members that prompted that opening slogan, if not that half-baked afterthought.

I refer specifically to tamale sacks filled with soapberries. You can also call them soap nuts but that makes them sound edible. They are not.

Ever heard of a tamale sack? Me either until my husband brought home some lard- and gluten-free tamales packaged not only in perfunctory corn husks but also in plastic (necessary evil) and then in a cloth sack with a drawstring.

Word switch notice: Sack to bag.

Me, I’d been looking for cloth bags with drawstrings for the soapberries I planned to give as Christmas gifts. Tamale bags would work! Never mind that the little bags are emblazoned with tamale graphics and information. It’s not like I was going to find soapberry bags.

No, I’ve never washed clothes with soapberries, but I know someone who does. You put some in a little cloth bag and toss it into the washer with your dirty clothes.

You can use a bag of soapberries several times before the berries quit producing enough saponin (essentially a fancy word for soap) to work effectively.

Anyway, enamored of the tamale packaging, I went to the supermarket and bought another five dozen tamales for the bags. Then I called the corporate tamale headquarters to give them a positive review of their product and to get bag specs.

The tamale bags are 100-percent cotton. Perfect for soapberries. Furthermore, the tamale person told me the ink used on the bags is food-based. I could tell she was very bag-savvy. She must routinely get bag questions, especially from people concerned about planet Earth.

The little bags for their various tamales (they even make bean tamales and Hatch chili tamales, presumably for vegans but I bought some too) feature the Go Texan logo, making them perfect gift bags for our Okie kin.

Soapberries are not good gifts for children, but I picture 5-year-old granddaughter Emily going back in 2022 to kindergarten (or whatever they call it now) with a bag of soapberries for show-and-tell, if they still have show-and-tell.

She could say something like “This is what my crazy grandmother (as opposed to her sane grandmother) got everybody for Christmas, except I didn’t get any because they can be poisonous if you eat too many, and if you want to make a necklace out of them it’s too dangerous because you have to use a real needle. She put them in a tamale bag. I’m not sure why.”

Meanwhile, yes, you can buy soapberries. Amazon offers a 35.27-ounce burlap bag of wild soap nuts handpicked at the base of the Himalayas for $39.80.

Sounds almost as good as handpicked Texas wild soapberries packaged in recycled San Antonio gourmet tamale bags.

Hanaba Munn Welch, a correspondent for the Times Record News who divides her time between Abilene and a farm north of Vernon, appears on Mondays. Her columns, as a tribute to the Childress Engine 501, always contain, amazingly, 501 words.

This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Soap nuts go in Christmas tamale bags Hanaba Welch column

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