Hold the sugar

These days, you've got to be impressed with the collective output of everyone with an online presence. I don't just mean homemade videos, 140-character aphorisms and photos you untagged yourself from. I mean the aggregate ingenuity of several other bloggers who really limited my choices when naming this blog:

• yellowmango.blogspot.com
• mangolass.blogspot.com
• mangopulp.blogspot.com
• mangopolis.blogspot.com
• yellowmango.wordpress.com
• mangopulp.wordpress.com

(mangolass.wordpress.com was available, but I'm not the biggest fan of outdated words, especially for women)

Ultimately, name doesn't matter. Unless you're an insecure seventh-grader-to-be whose friends call you Yawn, Juan or, endearingly, Yen. After middle school, exotic names may be cool, but I had already distanced myself from my sleepy, masculine Chinese name. Maybe that's why I don't deserve to call this blog yellowmango.

I don't mean to dwell on those (pre)pubescent years, full of angst and unfiltered thoughts that give a bad name to freedom of speech. Accordingly, we called them xangas or el-jays, for full-fledged grown-up blogs they were not. And yet, every time I call this a blog I feel a twinge of preposterousness. It's time to set the terms, right at the outset:

• This will not be a vaunted expression of dressed-up thoughts.
• This will not be an outlet for angst.
• This will not be a sporadically updated chronicle of promises to blog more regularly when I have more time. I've tried that public self-guilt-tripping before, and it just gets old. Either I post or I don't.

In college I had more fun peeling fruits for people, especially oranges and clementines. Here, I will offer up mangoes.

Like most other things, mangoes taste best ripe, when the juices mature and the peel drops off effortlessly. If I'm generous (read: lucky), you'll get some of these yellow mangoes.

Sometimes my impatience gets the better of me. Sometimes it's the stubborn inscrutability of the mango. In these cases, your unripe mango will be tangy, fibrous, maybe a shade of green. It may numb the top of the mouth.

Your mango may be carefully diced, clumsily cut into strips or hastily hewn into halves with the skin on. A hairy pit may jam fibers in your teeth. Mangoes (and my dentist's warnings about gum health) have made me floss more regularly.

Mango pulp, which I've recently discovered, is incredibly versatile and available at your local Indian store. It's the secret to restaurant-flavor mango lassi. You'll get mango pulp when I feel adventurous; also when I'm too lazy to process the mango myself. Like now: go here and try the first mango lassi recipe.