How to Eat a Mangosteen

Yesterday, after a debilitating day in college, I came back home only to slump on the sofa like a backbone-less amoeba. After spending about half an hour staring into space while my brother performed calisthenics (he's trying to lose some weight) around me, I finally summoned enough energy to drag myself to the bathroom to wash my face.

I know, you're probably thinking, 'Gee Saff, a shower would be much better, don'cha think?'

Time for another juicy little tidbit about myself. I do not shower unless it's dark, or somewhere close to the hour when the sun sets. I don't know why, it's just a thing I like to do, like drowning kittens and posting soft porn pics.

Anyway, after washing my face, I suddenly had enough energy to feel reasonably responsive towards food, so I ambled into the kitchen and opened the fridge to find...2 dried lemons. They were fresh when I bought them. :p

Now I was hungry. It says something about the way my mind is wired, eh? I don't feel hungry unless there's no food. In the event of a war, I'll be the first to surrender. Just gimme food.

That's about enough off-topicness, I think. I looked around the kitchen and spotted some mangosteens my dad bought when he came home with durians 2 days ago. Mangosteens make my front teeth brown after eating about a kg of them, but heck, I'm at home and the only people who can see me are the ones who saw me when I was throwing up in the toilet, so all was good.

So, back to the topic.

Step 1: Get a big basin thingy and unload all the mangosteens from the orange plastic bag. Fill basin with water and wait for all manner of creepy crawlies to emerge from those innocent-looking mangosteens. If you're the type who gets antsy (heh) when dealing with insects, get someone to do this for you.

Step 2: Empty basin containing carcasses of ants/grasshoppers/misc insects, and drain the fruits. Now, under running water, carefully remove the stem of the mangosteen and the poufy 'skirt' thing surrounding the stem.

Bear in mind that the people in white coats don't actually call it a 'skirt', but I'm not a fruitologist and it looks like a poufy skirt to me, so that's what it'll be called from here on. For educational purposes, I have included a simple colour-coded sketch for clarification purposes. Sorta like Eating Mangosteens for Dummies. The area you need to remove is green in colour.

If you think ants drown, think again. Some of these little buggers are hardy creatures and won't die unless you fire a torrent of water at the speed of one of those water guns at them. Luckily, ants are small, so water from the tap would have the velocity of a water gun.

Step 3: Jump around and fling arms wildly to get rid of any straggling ants crawling on various parts of your anatomy.

Step 4: Set fruits out to dry, or wipe them dry if you're impatient like me. Make sure your hands are dry too before you start peeling. I'm not fastidious, it's just that mangosteen pulp doesn't react well to water.

Step 5: Select a reasonably large mangosteen (about the size of your palm, unless you're like King Kong and have really big hands) and leave the rest of the tiny ones to your unsuspecting family members. Hey, it's every man for himself when it comes to mangosteens. If you're really desperate I suppose you could choose to eat the small ones as well, but they're really not worth the trouble.

Step 6: Pretend you're begging for money. Instead of money, hold the mangosteen between your hands and place your thumbs on the opposite side of the side the rest of your fingers are touching.

Wow, I suck at descriptions. Pictures to the rescue! Unfortunately, I can't draw for shit either. :(

The orange things are where your thumbs are supposed to be placed. The rest of your hand is cradling the mangosteen. Since everyone really knows how to eat mangosteens, I'll just pretend my last 2 paragraphs made sense and move on.

Step 7: Apply a downward and outward pressure on your thumbs until the skin of the mangosteen begins to crack. Then lighten pressure so you don't completely crush the thing and waste a perfectly good, juicy mangosteen.

While tempted to eat the fruit directly from the pulpy purple layer, it's always better to remove the white flesh to check for signs of the icky yellow stuff that tastes really bitter, or bruises on the flesh itself.

You don't want to end up with a mouthful of bile, and mangosteens don't bruise.

Now that the lesson is done, what's a Saffron post without embarassing stuff? I once opened a mangosteen without washing it first, and ate the flesh directly from the pulpy purpleness. Not only did the fruit explode with legions of black ants, the flesh was brown, which I didn't see because I was too busy stuffing it into my mouth.

Sometimes over-excitedness doesn't pay off.