Local fruits in season

What's in season

Above, we have the cashew fruit, beneath which is the green seed pod that contains the nut that most people know as a cashew. The nuts must be thoroughly cooked to neutralize a toxic oil before they are eaten. The fruit is edible as is, with a delicate, astringent taste. To a lot of folks who don't like the fruit or juice on its own, cashew juice mixed with other juices --- in this season, mango nectar is one of them --- makes the sum better than the ingredients. Cashew fruit is also good candied.

Below we have the noni. Anything that tastes this horrible has to have medicinal properties, and again, in order to stand the juice many people mix it with other things. You can buy noni fairly cheaply at stalls in El Mercadito and many other places where they sell herbal medicines in Panama. So do you think you can get rich quick by going into the noni business? Well, there's a worldwide market for the fruit and the juice, but it's limited and there's plenty of competition in place. Then there's the problem of all "miracle cures" --- they attract a criminal element and after enough frauds people with brains roughly commensurate to their money become wary of investing in them. We could give you the address of the last guy who with much fanfare came to Panama and promoted noni plants as "an ATM machine" --- but then he gets his mail at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary these days.

Photos by Eric Jackson

News \| Economy \| Culture \| Opinion \| Lifestyle \| Science \| Outdoors Noticias \| Opiniones \| Calendar \| Archive \| UnClassified Ads \| Home	Volume 14, Number 10 May 18 - June 7, 2008

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