Mangoes!

12 weeks into my Asian adventure and approximately 87 mangoes later I decided to finally share some facts and my love for that sweet juicy fruit.

What prompted me to write this is a fun fact shared with me the other day - more mangoes are eaten fresh than any other fruit in the world.

That is more than apples and more than bananas - how cool is that? Native to southeast Asia and India mango trees are also grown in Latin America and Africa and the fruit itself distributed worldwide.

There are over a thousand varieties of mango and most of them are grown in India. At the convenient for me store there are usually about 4 or 5 types of mango, and my favourite is the Elephant Tusk.

They look like this:

When ripe its light yellow flesh has a silky smooth taste, very refreshing and sweet. It is my fruit of choice to add to a tasty breakfast.

The other type I have tried is the Water Lily mango. They look like this:

Also very tasty and very easy for peeling when ripe.

The other type is called Indian mango. They look like this:

Much rounder than the fisrt two types, it has a very different taste, it has a sweet, rich and highly fragrant. Probably too fragrant for me to have often.

The other type is Phoenix. Mangoes looks like this:

This one is much bigger that the rest and I have not tried yet.

For me mango is a tasty tropical way to have my oats in the morning and it's also an essential ingredient of one of the best desserts I've tried here - the mango sticky rice. It's a Thai thing, sticky rice topped with coconut milk and served with a fresh mango. Yum.

And not only they are tasty, mangoes also help to lower cholesterol. the fiber content makes it a wonderful digestive and they are rich in the vitamins A and C.

In Kevin Grise's words and voice - cooool aaaaaazzz.