Food Facts

If pineapple is known as the “king” of fruits, guava is considered the queen. Thought to be native to southern Central America and Mexico where it’s been a major crop for centuries, guavas are members of the myrtle and eucalyptus family, growing throughout the tropics on small trees with smooth, copper-colored bark.

Another type, Psidium cattleianum, grown in flower and foliage gardens, is not for eating. Soft, sweet, and fragrant when ripe, guavas are small and round or oval, with varying…

If you’re looking for a juicy burst of flavor that’s as refreshing as anything you’ll ever eat, grapefruits certainly deliver. Large in comparison to other citrus fruits, grapefruits could be described as mouth-wateringly tart with a hint of sweetness – somewhere between a lemon and an orange.

Grapefruits are tasty all by themselves or added to any type of fruit or green salad. They’re also a unique and delicious addition to salsa…

Jujubes are a very interesting fruit with an even more interesting history. From the Rhamnaceae or Buckthorn botanical family, they’ve been cultivated in China for more than 4,000 years. There are at least 400 jujube varieties, successfully developed for their distinctive characteristics – principally varieties best for eating fresh and others for drying to attain a chewy, date-like consistency.

While jujube trees are extremely hardy and can flourish in even extreme temperatures with as little as eight inches of rainfall a year, they prefer sunny over shady areas…

Thriving even in frost, kale is an easy-to-grow green that keeps on giving: cut the smaller, paler green leaves to anchor or mix into fresh garden salad; use the larger, dark greens for stir-fries, pizza topping, or soup, while the plant keeps right on growing.

One variety is known as dinosaur kale in Tuscan regions for its glossy, crinkly, green-to-violet-colored leaves. Kale has a relatively short life…

An aquatic plant found near springs and slow-moving streams, watercress is an often-overlooked, leafy green food source that is a close cousin to mustard greens, cabbage, and arugula. An attractive, succulent plant, watercress bears small, round, slightly scalloped leaves, which, in summer, produce tiny white flowers that become small pods with two rows of edible seeds. Watercress has been cultivated in Europe, Central Asia, and the Americas for millennia for use as both food and a medicine…

What most people know about water chestnuts, sometimes more specifically called Chinese water chestnuts, are the basics: they’re white, have a crunchy texture and a fresh, mild taste, and are often used in Chinese cooking. In the West, most who use the small, round “corms” – short, underground, slightly bulbous stem bases – in their culinary endeavors buy them either whole or sliced in a can.

Water chestnuts are perennials from a family of plants called sedge, a type of marshy grass…

For many people, summertime is simply incomplete without serving a delicious array of scrumptious green vegetables. But here’s an idea: why not take a break from the usual leafy green salads, and dig into a plateful of succulent zucchini instead?

A member of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae), zucchini is an easy-to-grow summer squash native to Central America and Mexico. It was brought to the United States

While yams appear very similar to sweet potatoes, they’re quite different. In fact, they’re not even related. Yams belong to the Dioscoreae or morning glory family, while sweet potatoes are from the genus Convolvulaceae. Yams (from the African word “nyami,” meaning “to eat”) have only one embryonic seed leaf, while sweet potatoes have two.

Yams are grown throughout Africa, but Nigeria is the world’s most prolific producer, exporting to 70% of the world market…

Spanish conquistadors had their own historian, Oviedo, who reported positively about avocados discovered in Mexico around 1519. But this interesting fruit has graced Central and South America for perhaps 10,000 years, according to the avocado-inspired drawings and artifacts found in early Aztec settlements.

A judge from Santa Barbara took the first Mexican avocado trees to California in 1871. California now grows 90% of the U.S. avocado crop in more than 6,000 groves…