Mangoes

However bucolic Australia may seem to those stomping salt off winter boots or nervously watching the road for black ice, Sydney is a city stricken by hotel-robbing gangs, non-stop political ping-ponging over a worsening water crisis, deteriorating roadways, a perpetual hue-and-cry over an illegally imprisoned wannabe terrorist ... even a sad addiction to celebrity scandal.

But it's also got mangoes.

Big, juicy, tasty, glowing, ripe, perhaps-a-bit-too-sexually satisfying mangoes.

Growing up in a NJ suburb in the 1970s meant I didn't know a mango from a matzoh ball. When finally introduced to this perfectly evolved food a few years ago, it was small, mushy and overpriced. Working at Sirius on 49th Street in Manhattan brought me in daily contact with a sidewalk vendor who made wonderful banana & mango smoothies, which I'd suck down with the impatience of a hill-climbing SUV slurping fuel.

But now ... just about every day ... I enjoy bountiful, cheap, luscious mangoes.

Think I'll go have one now ........