Mangology: The Study of Eating a Mango

Mango season is a time I look forward to each year. A time when the sumptuous tropical fruit can be bought at roughly C$1 for two. I love eating mangoes - they're my favorite fruit.

But there's an art to preparing and eating a mango. Where points are graded upon several factors (awarded 1 - 5 points in each category):

1. Convenience: Opposite of degree of difficulty
2. Performance: How fast you can prepare and eat the mango
3. Cleanliness: How cleanly mango consumption can be performed
4. Maximization: How much mango meat you can eat off one mango
5. Aesthetics: How pretty it looks
6. Servability: How well it can be served or shared

I've tried several different methods of cutting mango, and here're a summary of a few of these - along with my recommendation.

A) The Porcupine

This is the way my mom would prepare mangos for us to eat when we lived at home.

Steps

a) Cut both hemispheres of the mango off the pit.
b) On each half, incise hash marks down to the peel, without puncturing.
c) Flip the mango half (well, technically less than half) inside out for the meat to pop outwards.
d) Eat the individual pop-out cubes.
e) Cut or peel off the skin on the remaining pit slice and eat the meat off the pit directly.

Grading

1) Convenience: 2
Not difficult, but not convenient - especially the eating part. And you'll also be limited to staying around at the sink until you finish eating.
2) Performance: 2
Not really a time-saver with all precision cutting and picking at the mango meat off the flipped out halves.
3) Cleanliness: 1
By the end of this, you'll have mango juice all over your face from digging into the porcupine quills - and probably hands that need cleaning from eating the pit. Not to mention there's likely to be lots of dripping and a stream of mango juice down your forearm.
4) Maximization: 3
Difficult to eat cleanly, leaving lots of leftover meat on the peel - lest you should spend more time scraping it with your teeth.
5) Aesthetics: 5
Full marks for presentation, as far as amateur mango-cutting goes.
6) Servability: 2
Unless you're sharing a mango with one other person, this isn't the way to go. No one will want your sloppy seconds here.

Total Result

15 points out of a possible 30


B) The Slice-n'-Dice

This is one way my coworker serves mango pieces at the office. His family grows mangos in Southern Taiwan.

Steps

a) With a fruit peeler, take off the mango skin.
b) With naked mango in one hand, and fruit knife in other hand, shave off large slices of the mango into a bowl.
c) Further cut the slices into smaller cubes.
d) Suckle and nibble at the pit until it's cleaned.
e) Wash hands and eat the bowled pieces with a fork.

Grading

1) Convenience: 3.5
Not as easy as it seems to cut off large slices, but eating with a fork sure is convenient.
2) Performance: 3
Takes time to peel and slice the mango. Eating may be easier, but certainly not faster.
3) Cleanliness: 3
The first stage isn't too clean with the peeling and slicing, but eating afterwards doesn't get much cleaner.
4) Maximization: 5
Shaving the mango reduces wasted meat.
5) Aesthetics: 3
A bowl of mango chunks. There are prettier things.
6) Servability: 5
Small pieces make sharing easy. Probably the best way to go if you have one mango and many mouths.

Total Result

22.5 points out of a possible 30


C) The Big Simple

After several runs of trial and error, this is the method I settled on. Maybe many people already eat this way, but I came up with this way of eating myself.

Steps

a) Cut both hemispheres of the mango off the pit.
b) Half each hemisphere again (to have four quarters).
c) Eat each quarter by peeling back the skin and eating it like an orange slice.
d) Cut or peel off the skin on the remaining pit slice and eat the meat off the pit directly.

Grading

1) Convenience: 5
Four cuts and you're just about done.
2) Performance: 5
From start to finish, I can wolf down a mid-sized mango in about 2 minutes.
3) Cleansiness: 4
Hard to avoid getting dirty hands eating around the pit, but the quarters can eaten without direct contact with mango meat.
4) Maximization: 4
Peeling the skin off the mango leaves a bit of fiber on it - still, not too bad.
5) Asthetics: 2
It gets marks for being simplistic. Sort of a New York versus Paris.
6) Servability: 4.5
Easy to share with up to 3 other people.

Total Result

24.5 points out of a possible 30

I don't normally care for asthetics when I eat a mango. So, discounting that category, the Big Simple gets 22.5 out of 25. And hence, I recommend The Big Simple for its optimized and simplistic nature.

Mango on!

The little things remind me of home.

I bought a box of Kellogg's Frosties (which I've grown up calling Frosted Flakes) yesterday, and had a mug-full at breakfast this morning. Most excellent. Nothing beats this kind of sugary goodness, with the best part being that energy-supplying sugar-milk after the last bite of soggy cereal's gone. They truly are grrreat! But they're grrreat at a cost. A cost of 125nt (about $4.50 CAD, but no tax on top) for 400g. Is cereal in Canada this expensive? Next time you go to the supermarket, take a look for me.

Our company cafeteria is now operational. Late last year, our second building (constructed behind and connecting to the original building) opened. Finally we've got a catering service selling food on the 2nd floor at a subsidized price for employees. The meals are in a buffet fashion, where you can take one piece of meat (which might be a chicken leg or a slice of pork) and as much veggies and rice as you want. There's a simple hot broth as well. The price? 40nt per person.

Call it Frosh Week for the catering company; today being the first day of operation. The menu included marinated (with soy sauce) chicken legs, sauteed cabbage, small cucumber wedges, scrambled eggs and tomatoes, stewed minced pork, and white rice. As far as Taiwanese simple lunches go, pretty standard stuff. Not bad however, and it suffices for a basic lunch if we don't feel like going out - such as when it's pouring rain like today.

Consider this good news. Who can complain about having a convenient cheap meal alternative?

I've been far too busy this week to post Part 2 of my Vietnam trip update.

But I've got another subject on my mind that I'd like to post about quickly.

Ben posted a while ago looking for an answer to the question about why you shouldn't put hot foods straight
into the fridge. Commentors then responded with different arguments about why food should be cooled first before going in.

But since then, it's kind of piqued my interest. Finally, I chatted with my friend Google and found that you should put food in the fridge before letting it cool off (at least from a bacterial standpoint).

Ask Mr. Electricity says:

Don't put hot foods in the fridge? Food safety experts say you should refrigerate hot food to prevent contamination. But that doesn't mean you have to refrigerate them immediately. The USDA says to refrigerate within two hours of preparation (or one hour if the room temp is above 90°). One to two hours of cooling off time will definitely make your refrigerator work less. It's a tradeoff -- the sooner you refrigerate the safer the food, but the more energy you use. Of course, meat and dairy foods are most susceptible to contamination, which is yet another reason to not eat meat and dairy in the first place. Vegan foods are much safer.

Pat Kendall, Ph.D., R.D., Food Science and Human Nutrition Specialist, Colorado State University, says:

Remember 140 to 40 in 2 hours. Refrigerate hot foods as soon as possible after cooking and serving. Ideally food should go from hot serving temperature (140 F) to cold refrigerator temperature (40 F) in two hours. If cooked, perishable foods have been at room temperature for more than two hours, the safest practice is to throw them out.

Kyla Boyse, R.N. from the University of Michigan echoes:

Refrigerate hot foods as soon as possible within two hours after cooking.

Finally, Erica Marcus says:

The goal when dealing with hot food is to cool it down as soon as possible, and Boor advised a strategy of divide and conquer. "If you just put the pot in the refrigerator," she said, "it can be hours before it drops out of the danger zone." Instead, she advised dividing the contents of [a soup] pot into two ('if not three or four') individual containers and refrigerating them.

So there you have it. I can refrigerate my food as soon as I want without letting it cool down first. Glad to know it. And now you know it too.