Day 1 of 62: My Fruit/Veg of the Day is a Mango

I've been craving mango for a week, but it seems that store bought mangoes like to play hard to eat. I was sitting in the lobby of Apple Valley, our local supermarket, all day last Friday. We were selling Buddy Poppies to raise funds for our local veterans relief fund for the VFW (shameless plug for a good cause). Apple Valley was having their quarterly produce sale and the store was packed. All day I stared at the flyer which beckoned me to by mangoes for 68 cents a pound. I called our post quartermaster to make sure I had a little time to buy some produce before the store closed and picked a couple of mangoes out that looked like they had potential.

When I showed my prized mangoes to my lovely wife and offered to share with her, she told me what I already knew, "These mangoes aren't ready to eat yet. They're too hard." Accepting temporary defeat, I placed them in our cupboards where they've been tormenting me and our unwanted guest fruit flies ever since.

So this morning with the excitement of a new month and a new challenge my patience has paid off. For breakfast I'm eating Bob's Red Mill 7-grain hot cereal with mango added. The full, grainy flavors of the cereal need a little something to keep it from becoming a chore to eat and I've found I enjoy the cereal more with added fruit. This is my first time trying mango with the cereal and I can definitely say there is a lot going on with my taste buds. The mango adds both sweetness and a pleasant tartness at times to the cereal. I wasn't convinced on my first bite that this was a successful combination, but as I am finishing up my bowl I'm pleased with the results.

When adding fruit to a hot cereal, cook the cereal as recommended and simply add the fruit after the first minute of boiling the cereal. For the mango, I wasn't worried about cutting it into neat little pieces. I sliced the mango in half lengthwise then scooped the fruit out from the side that didn't end up with the pit into a cereal bowl. I poured the fruit into the cooking cereal at the right time and then squeezed the skin over the cooking cereal to get some of the juice in.

Recipe:
3 cups of water
1 cup of Bob's Red Mill 7-grain cereal
pinch of salt
1/2 cup of mango

The container says it makes four servings at 140 calories before the mango is added but I found my real serving size was double that. A whole medium mango has about 130 calories. I used half a mango for the cereal and ate about half of what I prepared, so the mango portion of my cereal would be 30-35 calories with a total of about 315 calories for my serving. Of course I can't let the mango go to waste so I'm finishing up what's left and adding another 65 calories to my breakfast for a total of 370 calories. I could still eat another mango or a piece of toast and be on target for a calorie consumption of 1500-1800 calories for the day.

Whole grain cereals are great breakfast choices for digestive health and cholesterol reduction. My fiber intake from this breakfast was incredible, with 12 grams from the cereal and another 3 from the 3/4 of a mango.The meal gets its calories from carbohydrates but the cereal itself is very low on sugars at 1g per serving. The mango contains high amounts of natural sugars with about 31g of sugar in an average sized mango. The mango is high in vitamin C and B6 and a bit of calcium.

Food allergy information: The 6-grain cereal is processed in a facility that uses tree nuts, soy, wheat, and milk. Some people may have adverse reaction to mango because the peel and sap of the mango contains urushiol, which is the same substance that causes reactions from poison oak and poison ivy. The quantity of this chemical is lower in mango and it may take a few hours for signs of reaction to show.