Mango season is almost over. And with that starts my daily headache of thinking and preparing evening snacks everyday for Little Miss. Mango is her favourite food; it’s not just a fruit for her, it’s a complete meal if you allow her. She can eat mangoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And that makes mangoes my favourite too.
- It’s time for evening snacks: give mangoes
- She does not like a vegetable: give mangoes with food
- She appears bored: give mangoes
- Want to teach her something new: offer mangoes as positive enforcer
She was around two years old when we realised that she likes the taste of mangoes. The first bowl of aamras was devoured by her like she had never had anything tasty before that. From there on, we knew that mangoes would be our go-to food.
So, as soon as the first naturally ripened mangoes hit the market, that’s sometime in March in case of Alphonsos, we fill our refrigerator with mangoes. And my happy season begins with that too. Trust me when I say that cooking something is not the hard part. Thinking, planning and deciding what to cook is difficult. Once the decision is made, you have to see if you have all the ingredients.
Sometimes what happens with me is that I decide on a dish, make a grand announcement to my family and when I start looking I find to my dismay that I don’t have half the required ingredients. At least now we have all these ten-minutes delivery apps so life is a little easier. And when the dish is made comes the ultimate test. The “Little Miss likeability meter” which changes like magic. Only last week she loved chocolate muesli for breakfast, but this week chocolate muesli is out and fruit and nuts muesli is in. Even her routine breakfast has chaos written all over it.
I read somewhere that with neuro-divergent individual, routine is very important but there is no guarantee that the same dish will be palatable to them everyday. And this is so true. A dish maybe super hit for ten or fifteen days but will be rejected on sight on the sixteenth day.
That is why I breathe easier when mangoes come home. Mangoes never go out of fashion in my home. Mangoes don’t get a what-are-you-trying-to-feed-me look. Mangoes don’t bore her ever. Mangoes don’t have a fifty-fifty chance of approval, they have a hundred per cent chance of being accepted. And now mangoes are gone for the year and I’m sad and apprehensive. So so apprehensive.
It’s now time to get back to my cook books, my recipe diaries and the friendly YouTube cooking channels to find new recipes and make them. May the Kitchen Gods be with me!
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