Mangosteen is known as the "Queen of Fruit."

Mangosteen is primarily consumed as a fresh fruit. The fruit is common delicacy and often referred to as the “Queen of Fruit” in Southeast Asia. The volume of production is increasing in Thailand and fruit is now being processed into value-added products such as jam, candy, and wine. In traditional communities, the fruit pericarp (rind) was used as an antibacterial agent and for curing diarrhea. The use of the fruit rind and or whole fruit as a medicinal/nutri­ceutical beverage has been a recent trend in western societ­ies. Mangosteen extracts and processed products have now entered the worldwide health food and nutritional supplement market. The timber, dark red in colour, is used when available in cabinet making and where a heavy durable wood is required.

OnoPops produces a variety of flavors depending on local ingredient availabilty.

In 2010 brothers Josh Lanthier-Welch and Joe Welch established OnoPops, whose flagship product line consists of ice pops made from local and organic ingredients. Profoundly inspired by the patela tradition of ice and milk-based frozen pops in Latin America, the brothers based their product line on a marriage of the Mexican patela and Hawaiian regional cuisine. The result is an endless range of creative flavor combinations that changes continually based on which ingredients are available from local sources.

Nelson and Dorothea serenade a sweetpotato patch at Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook.

Sweetpotato has a wide range of uses, including foods, beverages, medicines, ceremonial and household objects, fishing bait, and animal feed.

Foods. Sweetpotato is baked or steamed in jackets in ovens to eat as a carbohydrate. Cooked sweetpotatoes may be peeled, mashed, and mixed with water to form a paste. Raw, peeled sweetpotatoes may be grated and mixed with coconut milk and served as a dessert after wrapping them in leaves and baking. Young leaves growing near the apex of vines are cooked as greens, sometimes in coconut milk.

Cacao pods and seeds with pulp. One of the many lovely things about Hawai’i is we can grow our own cacao or find the pods fresh for sale. Although making chocolate is pretty complex and involves some expensive equipment (Champion juicer, Cuisinart or melanger, molds), you can get a great chocolatey result from just using the nibs. Here is how to select a handful of fresh cacao pods and then ferment, dry, roast, and winnow them to create bitter yet delicious and nutritious nibs, and a few ways to use those nibs.