Last week, there was an auction of the first box of mangoes of the season to raise money for the Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney. Mangoes have always been one of my all time childhood favourite foods, the thought of which was always enough to induce a Homer Simpson salivating moment. Growing up, my mother used to regularly buy boxes of 20 mangoes throughout the entire duration of the mango season which lasts for some four to five months. The mangoes then had to be evenly divvied out in my household to ensure that no one would overeat into someone else’s share.

I never tired of them, often eating three or four mangoes a day. Unlike the mangoes typically available for purchase in the UK, they are not the firm varieties, but soft. They are also a little meaty in texture and extremely sweet and succulently juicy. So much so, there is simply no ladylike way of eating them. I always found I had to eat mangoes hidden away in a corner for the embarrassingly messy havoc they would wreak over my mouth and hands. I always eat mangos like so, sliced twice through on either side of the stone. I then cut the two outside pieces in a criss-crossed fashion and opened it up almost inside out like a hedgehog for eating.

Summer mango

Mangoes were a huge part of my Australian summer, as were watermelons, another one of my childhood favourites. On a steamy, hot, humid summer’s day, there was nothing I liked better than cutting watermelon into bite-sized pieces and putting them in the freezer for about 45 minutes till they were freezing cold before eating. Nothing ever seemed to taste better than biting into icy cold watermelon to help cool down on a really hot day. Oh the joys of an Australian summer…