How to eat a Mango

My best buddy Mike said once, “I don’t eat fruit that I need a tool to get into—this includes coconuts (not a fruit), pineapple, kiwi, avocado, melons and the like—unless it is prepared like in coconut (not a fruit) pudding or guacamole or pumpkin pie or something.” Which would mean he does eat fruit like apples and pears and bananas, oranges, peaches, nectarines, plums and the like because he can buy those in the store, give them a quick wash and bite into them without an intermediary between him and his fruit besides water, maybe.

I asked him if he thought most people were like that and he said they probably were. So I asked him who was buying all that weird stuff in the store like coconuts (not a fruit), pineapple, star fruit, mangoes and the like. We didn’t know. So we went to the store, the one I used to work at during high school, and went to the produce section, which as far as the store layouts go is the focus of this particular store. The one in Ventura is wine and spirits; the one in Oxnard is a bakery. Anyway we noticed the produce section was dominated by apples and oranges in the center, big pyramids of them, but the perimeter was a smorgasbord of strange fruit and veggies. We bought a coconut (not a fruit) for some reason. And spent a long time trying to get into by whacking it and smashing it with heavy stuff. It is remarkably resilient. But that is not the purpose of this post. Mangoes…

Mango is a strange fruit and I remember once I was mopping a dirty spot in the store when Eddie The Produce Guy was checking the produce. Form one box he pulled these big pear shaped things. I asked him what they were and he said they were mangoes. I had never seen one before so I took one and scrutinized it. It was kind of like a big pear. I could feel that the skin was really thick though. Eddie watched me and I asked what does it taste like and how do you eat it. So he takes the one I held, cleans it off, pulls out his knife and cuts a big hunk of it off, so the skin is like a bowl holding the dark yellow flesh in the center. Then he cuts into the flesh over and over making a giant tic tac toe board. I had no idea what he was doing and how one would eat a mango. So then he takes the skin and pushes up from the center reversing the concave and turning it convex and as he did this it opened up like a little city with rectangular buildings sticking up in neat little rows. I remember a child like vocalization of: “Whoa, cool!” and he gave me the skin and told me to bite off each little rectangle in turn.

That was a flashback fyi so I could show this:

walking into Albertson's (the arch nemesis of the stores I had worked at, Vons) the first thing I saw was the produce section and as I walked down the aisle with lunch meats and sandwich cheeses on my left and fruit on my right I came across a stacked pyramid of big pear things. I picked one up and held it in my hand like it were poor Yorick. And I had this desire to take it home and cut it up, remove the skin in a hunk make a tic tac toe cut and invert the skin revealing those rectangular buildings on a small planet I held in my hand. And then like Godzilla eat them all! (Godzilla never purposely ate buildings, it was always accidental--I remember one time my dad showed me it was a guy inside Godzilla with small model buildings he tramped through. I couldn't believe it.)

I purchased one mango at $1.13, took my two foot receipt and recycled white bag before walking through the parking lot of blackened bubble gum and then driving home. I put it in the refrigerator. It sat for a week.

one week later:

I removed it expecting it to be mushy, but it wasn't. It was firm. I picked up a knife and cut a big hunk of it off then made 5 vertical cuts and 7 horizontal cuts. I put the knife down. With both hands, or both sets of fingers rather, I pushed up the center pulling the flaps down, flipping concave convex, opening the slices up like canyons in the earth until you get this: