Mmm...mango

I eat several pieces of fresh fruit each day. Sometimes fruit is my dessert; sometimes it's a stand-alone snack.

One of my favorite fruits is mango.

Mango is incredibly versatile, being incorporated into pies, ice-creams, pickles, curries, smoothies, and on, and on. I'm convinced, though, that the best way to eat mango is all by its lonesome. That way, no other food items interfere with the glorious, sweet taste.

Sadly, mango doesn't grow in northerly climes, which accounts, in part, why it can't often be found on the shelves of my local grocery. Another contributing factor is that mangos take many, many months to ripen. Even when I lived in the South Pacific, mango was really only available one month out of the year, or so I seem to recall.

One harsh reality of being dependant upon exported mango is that they are frequently harvested and shipped before ripening. As you can see from the above photo, the mango I'm slicing is, alas, under-ripe — telltale signs are the anemic flesh (vs. deeper yellow or orange) and green color in the peel (vs. red, orange, yellow).

Ah well, beggars can't be choosers, etc., etc.

To prepare:

Mango simply requires peeling. I like to peel first, then slice and/or cube the flesh.

After that, just toss in a bowl and spear pieces with a fork. But slowly. The joy comes in lingering over each and every morsel.

Note: A popular and picturesque method of peeling/eating involves cutting the unpeeled mango in half (well, nearly in half, since the pit is formidable), cross-hatching the flesh without slicing through the peel, then turning the peel inside-outish and "grazing" on the thumbnail-sized cubes of fruit.