My friend Derba was in my kitchen the other day.  Her name is actually Debra, but I found it humorous one day to switch the r and the b around to make it Derba.  Fortunately for me, she actually thinks that I’m funny when I do this sort of thing which is one of the reasons we can remain such good friends.

Between my fibromyalgia and her third shift job as a peds nurse, our get togethers are limited these days to our annual Oscar Party (now six years running) and another 1 to 3 times a year when the planets align just so.

She stood by recently as I prepared a dinner of grilled chicken breasts, fried spinach and mango salsa minus all the other salsa ingredients except for the mango.  After I had peeled the mango and was trying to slice the fruit away from the core/pit/whatever the mango equivalent is, I turned to her and said: “Do you find these things as mysterious as I do?”  Derba cracked up the way that she does when I am being hilarious, at least to her sensibilities and mine, which as I mentioned earlier is one of the square roots of our enduring friendship.  Sometimes she gets me so perfectly that I ask her to marry me, even though we both have previous commitments in that department and neither of us is lesbian.

Here’s the thing about mangoes.  I am not clever with food.  I am not a culinary adventurer.  I stay within my known borders.  Until I was 16, I thought that canned corn, peas, and green beans were the length and breadth of the vegetable group.  I never even heard of broccoli or cauliflower  until my younger sister Mary introduced the family to Bird’s Eye frozen boil-in-a bag versions with cheese which she had the exotic experience of enjoying while having supper at her friend’s house.

Admittedly, I have come a ways since then, but everything is relevant.  I have, in recent decades, partaken of mango sorbet and mango fruit smoothies and on one occasion at a potluck, served myself a spoonful of diced mango that was in a state of perfect ripeness and flavor.  It was that last experience that caused me to purchase a mango of my own to dice and enjoy, but once I got it home I was mystified as to how to unlock its offerings.  I guessed at its ripeness as there was a little give to the touch and I peeled away its skin with a paring knife.  What now?  I took a larger carving knife and attempted to halve it only to find that after going in about half an inch, my knife hit some kind of hard yet crunchy feeling core that it could not penetrate.  What the F?  I tried from several different angles, all to the same effect.  I managed to get a few chunks separated from that Velcro-like-center, however it struck me as very meager for my efforts and not nearly as tasty as I remembered, so I decided I was out of my league and left mango harvesting to the sorbet and smoothie makers.

Once again it was my sister Mary, during my recent visit in Louisiana, who elevated my tastes.  She made a mango salsa with grilled chicken and a side of coconut rice.  It was delicious.  She cut up another mango a day later and I had it in my yogurt.  Thinking I’d like to enjoy this once I got back home, I asked her how to tell when a mango is ripe.  “Do you squeeze it?” I asked.  “No.  That bruises the fruit.” she said in that way of hers that is like a mini smack down, the implication being that “there is knowledge of such things, but you are not yet ready to receive it silly grasshopper.”  She did eventually impart to me that she selects her mangoes by color and smell.

Well, I still rely on finding a slight give beneath the skin to select my fruit.  The thing is that, having gotten a little more practiced with selecting ripened mangoes, I still find that there is scarce fruit for the relative size of the thing.  And no matter how much I try to  separate the pulp from its core there is always some fruit that remains stubbornly attached – too much to let go to waste – and the only way to get at it is to – well ….suck it off.  This I do in the privacy of my own home.

And let me just say this about that – I need to floss afterwards.