Last weekend my grandma sent me an email with some recipes, and one of them was a dessert with mango in it. Since Mango is not one of the fruits I had been eating all my life, (and in fact I had never bought one myself) she sent me some mango instructions, so when I went to the grocery store earlier this week, I bought one. So today I followed the instructions and took pictures, so that hopefully you can feel confident about eating a mango if you've never had one before...

"If you have never bought a mango, I will give you some ideas. The red/yellow ones are my favorite. Pick one up and hold it in the palm of your hand, wrap your fingers around it. If it feels hard like a bowling ball, put it down and try another. You, of course, don't want to squeeze the fruit in a store, but you do want to know if it will be good. So, with it in the palm of your hand, lightly check and see if it has a little 'give' to it. It shouldn't be soft-soft, just give a little under light pressure." (I found that she was very right about this, some were very hard and others very squishy, mine was just right. :) )

"Now, if your aren't experienced with a mango, first thing is to peel it with a potato peeler. They are really slick on the inside, so hold on good."

"They have a most unusual seed. The mango is oval shaped, and the seed runs from almost the very top of the fruit, to the bottom, but it is a very flat seed."

" Look at the mango. One end is a little wider or flatter than the other. Cut just a little off of the flat end so it will be stable when you stand it up on that end. Standing on that end, turn the mango so the narrow part of it is on your right and left, and the wider part runs from next to you to away from you."

"Now, the seed is no more than 1/2" wide. With a sharp knife cut clear through to the bottom of the fruit, 1/4" on either side of the center. That leaves you with 2 flat (on one side) oval discs, and the center part with the seed."

" You can also cut a slice or two off of either side of the seed---but I used to give that part to George to eat. He loved them."


(This is where I smooshed off the remaining flesh from the seed under hot running water so that you can see what the seed really looks like.)

"Alright, now lay the 2 discs down on your cutting board and slice them crosswise into maybe 1/3 inch slices.They make a wonderful fruit to just cut up, like above, and serve in dishes as a dessert by themselves, no sugar needed."