Mangosteen

It's finally mangosteen season! The mangosteen is one of my favorite fruits in the Philippines. It is unlike any I have ever known or tasted, especially since I am from a place that only sells apples, oranges and bananas (just to simplify a bit). The availibility of tropical fruit must be better here on our island than almost anywhere. In fact our island has one huge festival in August that people all over the Philippines come to just to buy fruit!

The mangosteen is about the size of a mandarin orange. It has a hard purple-black shell and a soft red inner shell. The part you eat is the white part in the middle. It is tender, sweet, juicy, and it melts on your tongue! It is like candy to me. I sat here and cracked open a whole bundle of them for my after-school snack. They are very healthy and fight cancer.

One of the only problems is that they are one of the more expensive fruits relatively speaking. They are also not always in season, whereas the mango is always available. Here are some interesting facts I found on the internet about mangosteen.

--Ultra-tropical
--Cannot tolerate temps below 40º F (4.44º C), nor above 100º F (37.78º C)
--Attempts to establish it north of 200 latitude have all failed
--Ordinarily requires high atmospheric humidity and an annual rainfall of at least 50 in (127 cm), and no long periods of drought.
--mangosteen trees can take 10-40 years before they start regularly producing plenty of fruit.

Praise God for the mangosteen! Yum! You will have to come try it for yourself!