Mango Madness?

Warning: this is sort of a continuation of my previous pineapple pondering post, only slightly more aggravated.

Today's post could have been about my love affair with cast iron cookware, or the lovely spelt pita bread I made today for the first time, but I just read a brief article posted on facebook by NPR about importing mangos from India. Here's a short excerpt.

"At over $30 a box, that's a king's ransom for a taste of home. But I paid up.

Inside were 12 forlorn mangoes, each wrapped in a little pink Styrofoam net stocking. This is not how mangoes were meant to be sold. In India, you find them piled on the side of the street, great pyramids of red, green and gold, ripening in the lazy heat. And a vendor chants the names of his mangoes: Himsagar, Babu Himsafar, Langra."

I can only imagine how luscious it would be to sample the 1500 varieties of fresh mangos from street markets in India! One day I will walk down the little crowded alleys, haggle with vendors, and eat myself sick on rare and ripe mangos. But that will have to remain in the realm of someday, because I don't live in India. I am lucky enough, though, to live in South Florida and right now is mango season!

Mango trees are everywhere, heavy with long thin green varieties, dark purple heart-shaped varieties, bright pink, yellow, and orange varieties! I'm not too familiar with names of the mangos that grow everywhere here, but my favorite varieties are begged, borrowed, bartered and gleaned!

View from my front window: My neighbors 3 different varieties of mango trees.

In fact, I just started a fruit gleaning group to encourage people to share their fruits among their neighbors rather than let it rot on the ground as the many, many fruits ripen and we are engulfed in mango mush!

Really? We need to import more mangos from India? I'd be OK with importing some saplings for propagation here. I'm even accepting of shipping some into temperate states from my home 

state of Florida, or the mega ag state California. But I have a hard time imagining a fruit picked before its prime, wrapped in a foam net, gassed, zapped with radiation, flown or shipped half way around the world and processed through customs before sitting on the shelf at my local ethnic grocery is gonna be able to compete with the deliciousness I can get by trading garlic rolls and pumpkin cake with my neighbors who have trees.

So sorry to all you mango lovers who don't live where mangos grow, but you guys have produce that don't grow here. Eat that and save your pennies for a trip to India instead.

::kristin::

Summer Fruit Festival at Fruit & Spice Park, Redlands, FL