We bought another pack of “Organic Dried Mangoes” from Costco yesterday. We actually have an unfinished bag left, but my mom and my sister are going through it at an ungodly speed and will be ripping open the new one in just a few days.
I am thoroughly disgusted by the “Organic Dried Mangoes.” ‘Organic’ is a slap-on adjective to describe the crusty, shriveled balls that they call slices of mangoes. Each nonsymmetrical piece deviates size-wise from each other like an uncoordinated scatterplot. Some are too small, and you barely get a chew before it gets lost in a salivary mess. Some are humongous, requiring at least four mouthfuls that each rings a sickly sweetness over the teeth, the gums, around the tongue, and into the throat. On rare occasions, you fish out the perfect piece—but it’s far from perfect, other than size. Spotted with brownness and crusty with mango dust, it gives off the same vibes that radiates from Snow White’s poisoned apple.
Hence why I bought another competitor of the Kirkland Signature’s organic mangoes: “Dried Mango” by tropical fields (“real mango pieces!”). A whopping three dollars cheaper, it contains everything that the sophisticated binge-eater desires in the ideal dried mango slice. Symmetrically thin slabs of beautiful orange-yellow glistens under the lamp with “artificial” sugar. Every piece is a uniform 2-3 inches, a size that you can hold comfortably and nibble at for a minute or so before popping the last inch into your mouth. Each bite explodes in a flavorful firework of fresh mango and citrusy sweetness. It practically asks you to eat more; nay, it begs you. You get flashbacks to when the mango would have still been hanging from the tree—tropical in its patches of red and green, wrapping around the juicy flesh that now lies pristinely dry in your hands. Its rich flavors overpower and wash over the same corners of the mouth where the “organic” sweetness of the other brand has once tainted. With the very first bite, there’s no choice but to finish it off, leaving a nostalgic imprint of sugar on the index finger and thumb. You carefully lick it off, savoring every grain. The bag slowly empties with each minute of pure bliss. Lesson of the day? Organic bad, artificial good. Eat dried mangoes, everyone.