ingenuemuse and buckminster go on about the crazy things, and never ever having tried one myself, I decided to break down and buy a pair mangoes the other night while I was out stocking up on frozen "Budget Grommet" meals. Heck, living in the Central Valley ought to be good for something. It's not called America's Produce Basket for nothing. Sure enough, I was able to procure a couple of them. They've been sitting in my fruit bowl for a couple of days now, waiting for my curiosity.
Well, I finished my meal-in-a-box, and then I was ready to try out this weird fruit. I am a total mango virgin. I got one out of the bowl and checked it out. These things are weird. It was leaking a tiny drop of a syrupy sap-like liquid from the stem. Immediately, I recognized a problem. I had no idea what to do with one of these things. Can the skin be eaten, like an apple, or should I peel it? Should it be quartered or chopped into chunks, cored? I flirt with the idea of posting a question to the 
ask_muse community, but I know the person who is probably most knowledgeable on this subject is probably out or otherwise up to her eyebrows in some project for the evening. So, I improvise. When in doubt, experiment.
Basically, I attacked the thing with a knife and peeled it, and went after the meat of the fruit in whatever way seemed most efficacious. Gah, what an enormous pit these things have! I have decided that mangoes have a strange flavor. They taste a little like watermelon, with some kind of piney notes in it. There also seem to be some citrus-y notes in there too. They are kind of smooth and melt-in-your-mouth and fibrous and tough at the same time. Weird -- which explains why Muse likes them. Heh heh. They're sticky bastards too. The flavor's not bad, in my opinion. It's not something I'd want every night, and it's never going to displace strawberries as my favorite fruit, but mangoes do make a nice change of pace -- ha ha, welcome to the dessert of the real.
Fair warning, there are seven pics of a fool mangling a mango behind the cut. These are not for the faint of heart or the low of bandwidth.
Hey let's party, let's get down, let's turn the radio on,
This is the meltdown.
Get out the camera, take a picture,
The drag queens and the freaks
Are all out on the town.
And cowboy Jane's in bed
Nursing a swollen head.
Sunshine Sally and Peter Ustinov
Don't like the scene anyhow.
I dropped acid on a Saturday night
Just to see what the fuss was about.
Now there goes the neighborhood.
"There Goes The Neighborhood"
--Sheryl Crow
Here's the "right" way: lay the fruit down on a counter or cutting board. With a longish knife, cut the fruit in half parallel to the counter and just slightly off-center (to avoid the pit; if you hit the pit, work around it). Turn over and repeat. You now have two halves. Take one and score the flesh, three or four times lengthwise and three or four times perpendicular to that, checkerboard fashion, being careful not to cut through the skin. Then turn it "inside out" which will result in a bunch of cube-shaped pieces you can easily cut free from the skin. Repeat with the other half. The "middle," containing the pit, is mostly waste anyway, but you can cut a bit more off that as well.
Mango is a complicated fruit, but my personal favorite.
Tut, tut... Muse is getting raunchy
There is no wrong way to eat a woman. Methods differ only in ease and level of mess created. How terribly coincidental that you had one last night, as I did also. Then again, it is the world's most popular fruit (look it up - it really is).....
Women have complicated fruit, but they are my personal favorite.
Re: Tut, tut... Muse is getting raunchy
I understood his subtext well enough. I may have trouble with eating mangoes, which I have not tried before (nevertheless it was completely and enthusiastically savored and devoured) but I assure you I know my way around the other delights of the produce aisle figurative and otherwise. It takes one lover of the complicated to understand another one, so
minstrel70 and I are on the same page. I can see what makes the mango such a popular treat. On the other hand, as Sigmund Freud once said, "Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar."
..."a fool mangling a mango"
O, honey! Need I explain? Your description of a mango is so very near how one could describe the "fruit" of a woman.
Juicy, complicated, unique flavors... a "big pit" to suck on... "mango hairs"-- or fibres as you put it.
mmmmm!
GOTTA GO!
Re: A Fool And His Mango Are Quickly Parted
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
-- Aristotle
We learn by doing. That's why I picked up another mango while I was at the store. If I messed up with the first one, well, it was a learning experience. The Count never stays clueless for long, and learning is such an enriching and satisfying experience. I'll make sure I tease the maximum amount of enjoyment out of the next one. I have found that mangoes have a subtly addictive quality about them. Once you start eating them, you can't stop. I am not so much a fool as to part a mango quickly. That's a good way to cut myself. I'm more of a patient and persistent kind of guy. It seems that the best way to enjoy these things is to slowly peel it and nibble away at it, savoring as I go, being careful not to let a drop of juice escape my greedy tongue.
I hope you have a wonderful day. I love the new icon, by the way, and I can't wait to examine all of them at leisure. Perhaps after I get to work. Delayed gratification is such sweet torture.
Practice makes perfect
No matter. When I get to the BVI I'll be knee deep in cheap mangos.
Re: Practice makes perfect
Re: Practice makes perfect
And while median property values in CA are undoubtedly higher, that's not to say the NJ is cheap. Especially Hoboken, the unofficial "sixth borough" of New York City.
Re: Practice makes perfect
Re: Practice makes perfect
But seriously, I believe it grows in poor soil, which makes it a sensible choice here.
LMAO
Thank you.
Re: Thank you.
Mangos are fun though - gotta keep the floss around, but well worth the mess!