mangoriffic

So. What is up with the mango? During my grocery excursion yesterday I purchased one mango. I said to myself "Now there is an ugly-ish, funky looking fruit for $1. Probably I should buy that."

Now I've never bought/tasted/tried to cut up a mango before, so the whole thing turned into a very confusing experience. First I tried to cut it in half. Nothing doing, apparently mangoes have pits...no...it's not a pit, it's like a stalk through the middle of the fruit (note: the stalk doesn't taste good. At all.). So then I kept up hacking off random pieces from the stalk until we had a huge pile of mango flesh.

We settled onto the couch, toasted ourselves with mango slices and chomped down. Which is when we discovered that the peel is really nasty. We couldn't figure out if we were supposed to eat it, but it's wildly tough texture and tendency to taste like chemicals made us think no. So we spent a great deal of time peeling mango from its peel with our teeth. The flesh of this fruit is sticky...like juicy sticky that gets all over your face (if you are me) and hands and if you wipe your hands on your jeans it looks like somebody sneezed and got loogies on you. Still, it was a strange but tasty experience.

Not wanting to leave out our babies, I cut off little hunks for the hamsters. Mutton Chop loves fruit and grabbed it from me - then she tasted it and smacked her lips for a while. We'd never seen a hamster smack its lips and there is no way to describe it that will convey how ridiculous it looks. I think the laughter continued for 60 straight seconds. Chip picked up the mango and then tried to drop it, but it stuck to his little paw-hands and when he finally got it off his paws he sat looking at those little furry extensions with an expression of utter puzzlement.

I'm still not quite sure what I think of this bizzaro fruit, but the tasting of new fruits has begun: next up, the pomegranate. Maybe I'll look it up online first, though...