Doing It Island Style, Part 4: A Taste of the Tropics

It was my mission to try as many edible plants as possible during our trip.  The house we stayed at had a mango tree:

A banana plant with frustratingly green bananas:

Bananas

A super sweet and delicious orange tree:

Oranges

A pomelo tree, which is sort of like a large grapefruit:

Pomelos

And a breadfruit tree.  Breadfruit is starchy like a potato and doesn't have a lot of flavor.  Hawaiian tradition is to plant a breadfruit tree in the backyard when you buy a house because it can sustain your family through a time of famine.

Artocarpus altilis aka Breadfruit tree 

Like potatoes, breadfruit can be eaten at any time during its development and the longer it stays on the tree, the bigger it gets.  Eventually, if left unpicked, the fruit will become sweeter as the starches convert to sugars.

One breadfruit is the equivalent of about eight medium potatoes.
 

After cutting three breadfruit off the tree, I noticed a white sap started gushing out all over the place.  I looked up on YouTube how to prepare breadfruit and opted to try frying them in coconut oil.  I peeled and sliced the fruit up into strips like fries and soaked them in cold salt water.



Once all sliced, they were dropped into the heated coconut oil.

After sprinkling on a little sea salt we had authentically tropical breadfruit fries:
 

They were pretty good and picked up the taste of coconut.  You don't see breadfruit in the grocery store here because it has about much flavor as tofu (don't ask me why we see tofu in the grocery store).

We also stopped by a fruit stand and picked up sugar cane and fresh coconut.



I cut the sugar cane into strips which can be chewed on.

Getting the coconut water out of the coconut was a bit more labor-intensive and turned into an hour-long project (I only had a paring knife). Eventually found success...



The coconut meat was very soft.  It was like eating coconut-flavored jello.

Alas, my series on Hawaii has come to an end.  If you've never been to Hawaii, I hope you will be able to visit some day.  There is no place quite like it.  Mahalo!