One Pound Four Ounce Breakfast from the Sky - Picture

Lettie and I were just finishing our first walk of the day.  She was tiring from her Mile and a Quarter patrol and perimeter search of Wilton Drive and perked as we rounded the corner back to the house.

We heard it fall from the sky.  Rustling leaves as it descended, the sound of a heavenly breakfast hit the ground with a loud THUD. 

I say we heard it because I didn't see it from the distance until this particular Manna From Heaven rolled to a stop close to the street.

I saw it close up and thought this was a monster, a big one and bound to be extra sweet and juicy.  Picking it up from the beach sand that passes for soil, I noticed that this was one of those Softball Sized Treats that you get often in a good year.   This has not been a good year for Mango, most have been small and in the 3 to 5 ounce range for this particular Hagen Mango Tree.

I'm fortunate to like these things because there are so many falling from the sky that I'm able to smell them a block away.  The ants are doing a better job cleaning them up than I am, and since it's in a semi public location rather in my back yard, I stop by with the dog when I can.

Walking the last few steps to the house, I saw my neighbor Scott walking to his electricians work.  He smiled as he saw me tossing it into the air in my left hand as I reached into my right to get the MP3 Player out of my pocket.  I said merely "Breakfast" with a smile and pulled out the player to silence the audio book.  Thinking it was a pocket knife Scott laughed and said "You must be hungry!".  We laughed and I brought it inside to clean up. 

I was hungry, and this beauty made for a wonderful breakfast.  In case you're curious, that one Mango at a Pound and a Quarter works out to be around 300 calories itself.   They're 70 calories to 3 /12 ounces.  To keep a big guy like me moving, it's a lot of Mangoes.   I consider it a diet food.  By the time you cram 12 ounces of Mango down your gullet, you're really not looking for any other food to add to it.

Oh and why the deal with the Hagen Mango?  What's so special when they're so big?

Hagen has been consistently the most sweet of the fruits with a deep orange inside that is unlike any other.   The bigger they are, the sweeter they are as well.   The candy shop would be hard pressed to have anything quite this good.

I looked forward to growing my own orange tree, and have enjoyed the ones that I have gotten from the yard.  If you haven't had the pleasure of picking your own fruit at the peak of ripeness, find a way to do it.  You'll be glad you did.  City folks don't generally have that luxury.

Add to all of that the relative exotic aspect of having a wonderful treat like a 30 foot tall Mango Tree dropping fruit sometimes in excess of one and a half pound and the child like glee of a foodie will come out in the best of us.

If I could only get that damn banana tree out of the pot in the back yard I'd have some banana for my cereal some day.  In the mean time, add a serving of oatmeal to the mango and puree or mash well.   Wait for it to get moist and you've got a full meal.