You can read about mangos here. I just look for a little softness at the stem end. My neighbour had a tree for years so we used to get them free.

Avocados also grow here so I buy them often and usually buy them rock hard if I want to use them within a couple of days. If they are for the same day then they should be just a little soft so they give a little with a light pressure of your hand. If you want them for a guacamole, then buy soft ones.

To remove the stone, cut the avocado in half and separate the two halves, cut into the stone with a heavy knife, twist it slightly and lift up to remove the stone.
Then I use a fork to push the stone off the knife blade.

SharonCb

Get Haas avocados, the ones with the dark thick bumpy skin. There should be a little give with you press them. Not too much, mind you, but a little give.

Like Sharon said, mangos should have a bit of give. I also use the aroma to judge. With most fruits, if there is no aroma, there is no flavor. (There are exceptions, of course, but not many.)

DH still picks the est avocados. I do the same things he does -- test to weight in the palm of the hand (should feel heavy for the size), check the stem end for a little give, check the skin for no blemishes and even color. 9 times out of 10, he'll still pick the best ones. We only use the Haas avocados. I can't stand the taste or texture of those pale green, smooth ones.

I buy avocados at Costco..and I purposely look for the greenest hardest ones I can find. I put them in the fridge and pull out one at a time to ripen a few days on the counter or window sill...they do fabulously this way.
Buying them one at a time at the grocery seems to be hard because they are usually already beat up and over ripe.

With the regular little hass avocados, the skin also gets darker as they ripen. So if you're looking for a ripe one that's ready to eat, look for dark, blackish skin. A hass avocado that feels softer than other avocados of the same green color is probably bruised rather than ripe.

I agree with everyone above. One other thing I learned about the Hass avocados is to choose the pointier ones, there's more flesh, less pit.

No help on mangos, I don't buy them.

Deanna

Fantastic - thank you everyone! I've always bought the dried mangos and love them. There's so many great recipes for them, thought I'd try some.

Avocados, well... the color always got me but I finally tasted some guacamole and kind of liked it..

Beanthere, you're right about the aroma too. I'm always amazed at the people who buy the peaches that have no smell. Actually, I'm amazed at a lot of what people buy, especially the ones that buy rock hard ears of corn..

I, too, buy my avocados hard. I bring them home and put them in a brown paper bag to ripen. DH would have never thought to try an avocado years ago. Now, he can't have Mexican anything without guacamole.

Mangoes I buy with a little give to them. I love salsa made with mangoes, apples, oranges, raspberries, etc. Yum!

I also use Haas. Buy them bulk and for me, the harder the better because I don't use them right the way. I leave the whole bag on the counter until they begin to give a little. Then I put the bag into the fridge except the one that I am ready to use. Avocados last longer that way. I find rock hard avocados in the fridge don't ripen properly.

As for mangoes, I love mangoes. When I was younger living in Hawaii we had two mango trees in the backyard. During season, I would get up, first thing in the morning, climb the trees to pick mangoes. I would pick the ones with a lot of colors (unlike mangoes from the Philippines, Hawaiian mangoes turn red & orange, not yellow, when ripen). The skin should be smooth and without blemish. The fat end should give just a little bit but not much. I would eat very ripe mangoes but the just-right ones are the best. Oh yea, you should smell a faint aroma but not a very strong mango sweetness. That indicates over ripe fruits.

Sometimes I picked the green mangoes too, for the pickle jars. I just peeled & sliced the mangoes, stuffed the slices into a jar filled with white vinegar without salt or sugar. I loved the very sharp vinegar flavor... well I was much younger then... LOL

Oh how I miss mangoes and papayas! They are very expensive here in Canada.

Al

I seem to notice that avocados can still go bad in the refrigerator after a while. Mangos also, they will become fibrous in the frig. In the refrigerator, both avocados and mangos do not get rotten, but they develop black spots in the meat.

Picking avocados:

"Avocados must reach full maturity before they are picked, however, they do not soften on the tree. The tree can actually be used as a storage unit by keeping the fruit on the tree for many months after maturing."

Avocado picking is easy. Pick them hard and green. They ripen soon in your kitchen and they will always taste like avocados supposed to taste. I donÂt pick them soft because that can mean they have been bruised under the skin.

Picking Mangos:

ItÂs much more difficult because there are so many varieties.
Just because they look good and smell good is no guarantee that they are not sour and fibrous inside, especially if you are buying mangos off season. Since I like mangos a lot and they are expensive, I will go to the market and pay for one mango, take a bite, and if I like it, I will buy many more.

In general, you can get much better quality mangos in ethnic markets.

I am thinking of growing a dwarf mango tree inside my sunroom.

dcarch

Al, you forgot in Hawaii, there are guava trees everywhere.

Dcarch, guava trees everywhere? Definitely not in our backyard! I liked guavas but since we only had mango and papaya trees, my friends and I went to a neighbor's (a few blocks away) to pick guavas without his permission. The guy was NOT happy and chased after us. We certainly were no angels at that age! :O The other fruits we liked to pick was passion fruit. Had to go to the small hill where the secret farmer lived. Rumor said he kept a wild boar to keep off intruders because he was growing marijuana in his farm! Our parents forbade us to get near the farm but of course we never could stay away! I didn't even like passion fruit but it was fun to squeeze them until they pop and watch the seeds and juice ooze out in my hands! What a mischievous child I was! LOL

Al,

It was amazing when I traveled there. There was a huge rainbow (Hawaii, the Rainbow State) in the sky and guava trees everywhere in this place with fallen ripe guavas all over the ground. Except those guavas were the pink kind inside for making juice, so they were sour.

As I was eating them I noticed that in the distance in the ocean, there were a few whales frolicking!

dcarch

BTW, I will have to tell you a story about Al Duerr someday.

In Venice I had (at one time or another) a guava tree, papaya, mango, passion vine, avocado, and citrus trees. I didn't like the guavas that much, the papaya, avocado, and passion fruit attracted possums, but the citrus, mango, and fig trees had few problems.

As for picking avocados, I mentioned a few years ago (like Deanna) that the pointier ones will have a proportionally smaller pit. The ones that are nearly round will have the largest seeds. I picked mangoes by color, and mine would be ripe when they were a golden yellow with tiny brown specs - they were the Manila variety and never turned red. Generally, the less green color you see, the riper they will be. Like avocados, they will continue to ripen off the tree. I picked my mangoes slightly green so that they would not fall off the tree. BTW, my mango was not a dwarf, and so it took up a lot of space in my yard.

Lars

Dcarch, what part of Hawaii did you visit? Sounds like the Big Island. You have a better chance for a casual whale sighting on Maui and the Big Island (sometimes Kauai) more than another other islands. You'd have to be really lucky to spot a whale along the Oahu shoreline. There is a big guava farm on the Big Island, Hilo side. To us, the Northshore kids on Oahu, we have more coconut, banana, papaya, mango trees everywhere. You will also find sugar canes and the old pineapple plantation site (before Dole moved out), and a few macadamia farms scattered here and there. Al

Yes it was the Big Island.

I surprised everyone in my travel group that I made myself custom "Red Dirt" shirts just by dipping a few of my things in a puddle, :-) and they paid good money for theirs.

Food experience was disappointing. I suppose I did not plan ahead had something to do with it.

I was angry that bananas at the Dole plantation was more expensive than Dole bananas shipped to NYC!

Macadamia nut oil was a waste of money. No flavor to it at all.

dcarch

We had bananas growing here in our garden but dug them out as we had so many ripe at once we didn't know what to do with them. They were the small Cavendish bananas for which Canary Islands are known. Now I think I will plant one again as I do love them and their appearance in a garden.

All the above mentioned fruit grows here as well, since the climate and volcanic soil are similar to Hawaii. I would like an avocado tree but they grow so big and our garden is already overflowing. But perhaps I could coax one to grow in a large pot. My neighbour dug out her mango tree because it was growing too large. Her papaya tree blew over in a storm but that's another fruit I'd like to try in a pot. I prefer the smaller, Hawaiian variety of papaya to the large ones which grow everywhere here.

SharonCb

LOL Dcarch. I notice no matter how frugal I am, I tend to open my wallet more willingly when I become a tourist. I bet the local businesses know that too! :-) Oh, the cost of labor is part of the reason for high cost foods in Hawaii. Not sure about now... when I was taking school break back in 1992, I took on a job working at Zippy's, a local fast food place. The US minimum wage was $4.25 an hour. I was paid $7.5 an hour to just buff tables and sweep the floor! I am sure kids who picked bananas and coconut were paid $7.5 an hour as well. When you add that labor cost onto a banana or that coconut, fruits that could be picked off a tree for free become almost unaffordable in the market.

Sharon, I have seen people trying to grow Papaya tree in a pot but they don't usually grow that great. Not sure if the tree requires bigger roots or the fact that papaya trees are tall with nothing else to balance its weight. The tree won't grow much and fruits are usually very small.

Now that I live in Canada :-( I would love to be able to grow ANYTHING! Nine months of winter in Calgary, not the best place on earth for farming, really!

Al

Interesting about papaya but I'm going to check it out at a couple of garden centres here.

I hear you about Calgary. My younger daughter lives there so I know babies are born wearing a heavy coat and snow shoes. LOL.

SharonCb

Dirtgirl, I get weird looks at the grocery because I sniff produce before I buy it. LOL! The less vision I have, the more I depend on my nose when shopping.

Al, you're right, and I should have been more specific. A good mango won't have a heavy sweet smell, but a light, clean, fruity aroma with no mustiness or cloying tone. It's such a wonderful smell. I had a friend from the Congo who was a chef. He introduced me to mangos and papaya. I remember thinking they were such exotic flavors and aromas. (Well, to a young girl who had never been out of NC or had tropical fruit that wasn't in a can, it was exotic!)

Sharon, I hear ya. My son was born with all that plus a head full of hair! LOL

AM, I wish my husband could pick avocados! He can't even pick bananas! Every time I send him to the store to get bananas he gets something so green that are only good for weapon!

I love trying exotic fruits as well... we went to the Asian market yesterday and picked up a Fire Dragon Fruit. We haven't cut it open because it looks so pretty outside! LOL Al

I had serveral when I was in Vancouver a few days ago.

Very pretty inside. Kind of like kiwi, except snow white fleshed. Taste? So so.

dcarch

Dcarch, how did you eat it? Plain with nothing else? Al

Plain. Slice it in halves , and scoop out with a spoon.

dcarch

Thanks! Will let you know if we like it. Al