I told you a week or so ago that our son arranged to send us some Mangosteens from a place in Miami. He lives in Thailand, and this is one of his favorite things. I had never heard of them, but found out that pharmaceutical companies are going nuts making supplements from the powder. I actually bought a bottle and am taking the supplements, but I haven’t felt any difference, and don’t look a thing like Julia Roberts yet, so I probably won’t order another bottle.
The mangosteen fruit came really nicely packaged in a styrofoam box with a dry ice type thing in it. We looked at all the fruit, but all of them were really hard, like billiard balls. We put a few on the island in the kitchen to ripen.
I’ve been testing them each day, eager to try one. Finally, two of them ‘gave’ a tiny bit when I pressed them, so I followed my son’s video, sticking my thumb in just under the green leaves at the top and pulling the top off. I then pulled all the purple part off, exposing the nice, white fruit inside. It looks just like this photo! The purple part is fairly hard to get off, but I think this is mostly because I was hurrying things a bit, anxious to try the fruit. The first mangosteen I opened didn’t have white fruit, so I threw that away. The second one looked JUST like the one above, so I carefully separated the white sections, which are remarkably similar to an orange.
They are, indeed, delicious. I ate three sections – which were very small – and took the other three to my husband to try. He said, “These are nice, but not something I would travel far for.” I can’t wait for more of them to ripen. I put six of them in a paper bag, taking the suggestion from Marsha, a good friend of mine. We’ll see if that works. The rest are still in the fridge in their styrofoam box. I certainly don’t want them all ripening at once!
What a fun experience!
