Dragon Fruit

This is one of the neatest, coolest fruits ever! :)
I first experienced a dragon fruit when my hubby brought one home from our local grocery about a year ago. I had never seen one before, and I had no idea what to do with it. So it sat in my refrigerator for, gosh, it must have been 3 months! Finally, when I was cleaning out the fridge, I decided to cut this strange fruit open and see what it was like. What a surprise!! The inside was translucent white, scattered with tiny black seeds. I smelled it, poked at it, and finally decided it had not gone bad. So I tasted it. Again a surprise! It tasted like,... well... dragon fruit! -Very delicate, light, and tropical. We bought several more, but again, they sat around. We just didn't know what to do with them. It's funny how we humans can be such creatures of habit! But, even though we haven't adopted these fruits into our diets yet, they have been in the back of my mind. So I finally decided to bring them to the front of my mind and do a bit of research on them. I found quite a few recipes; blended in smoothies and sorbet, balled in fruit salad, or just sliced and served! The first thing I learned to my complete and total shock was that my mother had a rather large dragon fruit plant as a houseplant when I was a kid! I just never knew what it was! It never made any fruit, as dragon fruit needs 2 or more plants in order to set fruit. But I do remember the stunning flowers! I also remember how easy it was to grow. I've read, too, how this plant is easily grown from cuttings or from seed simply collected from the pulp of the ripe fruit. So add dragon fruit to the list of plants we will be growing in our greenhouse!
Just look at all the varieties at this link!
Pine Island Nursery
Guess what! dragon fruit grows wild here in Hawaii! I've seen them on several hikes in misty areas of the island, though I've not seen any with fruit. If I had known what they were, I'd have brought home a few cuttings! Here's an article in our local paper about growing dragon fruit here in Hawaii:
Honolulu Advertiser, Island Life