Added sunlight time after the end of a workday is amazing especially for those who work a 9 to 5 job. Try these delicious and easy to make mango-centric recipes for “more light”. These recipes from the #CrespoOrganicKitchen are inspired by Daylights Saving time and with an added hour of sunlight you can enjoy these recipes while watching the sunset and add more #MangoJoy to your light.
The lack of small fruit is real and size Up-ortunities are too!
There is a significant and serious lack of small fruit coming out of mango orchards in the south (Chiapas & Oaxaca) right now. As a result, there is a lot of confusion and panic in the market. This is mostly because pricing remains higher than average and bigger fruit and higher prices mean more expensive pieces of fruit.
We’ve received new intel, including photos and video from our Crespo boots on the ground or in this case Roberto Crespo. His information has been coming in the last several weeks as we’ve been trying to better access the small fruit situation. It’s been coordinated and agreed upon by all Crespo’s as well as several other large and medium sized conventional and organic producers in the south. It all true, the small fruit shortage!
I shared my thoughts on this International Women’s Day in another post: “Where Is the Spine of International Women’s “Day”? Building Bridges: Diversity & Inclusion.
In that post I call on my fellow industry peers to welcome more diversity and inclusion on their teams, to their marketing streams, and beyond. Women and other underrepresented groups come with differing perspectives, education, skill sets, expertise, and training that should be celebrated. If we are willing to openly and honestly assess where we are at today, we can take the steps necessary to create a fairer world.
I asked those with a vehicle for sharing information in our industry to welcome more diverse voices, role models, and unstoppable leaders. Diversify who you interview, feature, and talk about. Cover topics of diverse value. Increase awareness. If we market underrepresented voices in our industry, we can help accelerate equity. But we have to support them directly, too!
Below is my contribution to the effort, celebrating a few of El Grupo Crespo/RCF’s Unstoppable Women’s voices!
It’s a weird day, this International Woman’s Day thing. It feels important but like we’ve made a very serious topic frivolous by placing it in a “day category”, next to International Ice Cream Day and International Siblings Day. My gut feeling is that this rather uncomfortable topic is placed here between ice cream and siblings because we don’t know what else to do with it. We still don’t know quite how to address real life disparity.
Most search engine results will point browsers to one particular website: InternationalWomensDay.com. As far as I can tell, the site’s origins are untraceable entities except for the fact that John Deer seems to be a sponsor (which feels peculiar and suspicious to me, I won’t lie).
The theme on this site is #EmbraceEquity. Despite this year’s incredibly cheesy (and if you ask me a little too soft for the subject matter) self-hug photographic rendition of the theme, the site manages to capture the most important aspects of equality: diversity and inclusion… “to get the world talking about why equal opportunities aren’t enough.” Citing that: “People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action.”
“Mardi Gras” means fat Tuesday, I only learned that a few years back which makes me giggle a little bit! It always falls before Ash Wednesday which signals the beginning of Lent a predominantly Catholic “event” which happens during the lead up to Easter and typically consists of payer, repentance and some fasting. Fat Tuesday is the day during lent when people indulge in all that they obstain from during lent. The day is a feasting occasion, often filled with all kinds of debauchery, which you can read about in more detail on Refinery 29.
Here are a few mango-centric recipes I whipped up this past weekend to help you celebrate Fat Tuesday which will be even better if you add some #MangoJoy.
Over the years, I really thought I understood the major problems affecting the “king of fruits,” specifically the varietals and those from the countries I worked with. Since I have traveled to orchards on multiple continents to examine the fruit and its “afflictions du jour,” I thought I had the facts straight on mango quality. Alas, since I met the Crespo family, I have come to discover that I had barely scratched the surface when it came to mango quality issues.
Like most everyone in the industry, I had to sift through a lot of misinformation about the quality of mangoes, but I tend to ask a lot of questions. And because I am me, I share the information I find. Under The Mango Tree’s goal has always been to get more accurate mango information to buyers, industry folks, and consumers. As we all struggle to compete in the complex agriculture world, this blog has been my attempt at being part of the solution. Talking about commodity imperfections is an important part of that process and an important part of commodity education.
Today I want to talk and share about the dark marks we see on many of the Ataulfo mangoes from time to time and most often from the ones that hail from the southern regions: Chiapas and Oaxaca. The good news in this particular affliction/imperfection is, that the mangoes ripen through the aesthetic imperfections, that tend to be more predominant when at the greener stage (when most of you receive the product), rather nicely and turn golden yellow without many blemishes (when the consumers see it). Harvesting and packhouse behaviors make a difference and so does talking about it.
Flowers have been top of mind this week, and it wasn’t because my social media feed was bombarded by flowers for Valentine’s Day. Rather, throngs of vibrant photos and videos of mango blossoms from the #HermanosCrespos lit up my WhatsApp, exhibiting the last of the late blooms in the south, the new blooms bursting open in the north and the vibrant openings everywhere in-between.
Beautiful mango flowers currently blanket most of Mexico. As we begin to learn more about the early season quality, yields, sizing, and the varietal nuances of the season from the southern regions’ mature fruit (where we’ve been packing for a month now), we are all filled with promise. That is what I love about mango blossoms: they gorgeously signal great possibilities in their abundance. Even though less than 1% of all blooms actually form fruit.
My favorite mango is a Tommy Atkins, but it’s not because it’s farmer and supply chain friendly. It’s my favorite because it’s culinarily versatile and it also happens to be farmer and supply chain friendly which isn’t a bad thing.
If you google Tommy Atkins, one of the first links is Wikipedia which describes in the first sentence the Tommy as not generally considered the best in terms of sweetness and flavor. If you ask me, this sets up Tommy for a negative bias before you’ve even seen one in real life. Yes, the statement that follows is true, basically saying: it’s grown because it fares well in the production and import supply chain. But, for real, this is a gigantic part of the equation, in all parts of the world, for all commodities. Not unique to Tommy.
Before you hear the retort from an adoring Tommy Atkins fan, based on my professional mango expertise and observations, not to mention my culinary exploits, I want to report that we have harvested the first organic Tommy Atkins from El Grupo Crespo’s southern orchards and, as this glides into your inbox, our southern packhouses are cleaning, polishing, and packing them into several of our most coveted packaging SKU’s: the Crespo Big Box, Net Bags and the old faithful Crespo 4KG case (all of which have been designed to look dashing as both big and small mango displays while also proving strong as stand-alone displays and storage).
El Grupo Crespo grows exceptional Ataulfo mangoes. They grow the Ataulfos in ideal microclimates that yield their signature flavor – sweet, sugar-caramel with a tinge of spice. If you ask me, it can only be created in Mexico.
The Ataulfo mango, a Mexican cultivar, is puro Mexico, as the saying goes. Just like Indian mangoes and Thai mangoes taste and look a little different when grown in Mexico, the Ataulfo mango is the same grown elsewhere. The Mexican season is THE season for this special mango. Many consumers know this and more are learning. We want to fuel that momentum, educating on best handling practices, and gaining more lovers of Mexico’s Ataulfo.
Back in 2019, just prior to the mango season, El Grupo Crespo opened Empaque Don Jorge II (EDJII) in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, Chiapas, or – as the locals call it – Coita. It was the Crespo family’s second proprietary mango packhouse, plus several hundred supporting hectares of organic mango orchards. The expanded mango volumes and increased packing outputs allowed the family business to expand and grow. This season El Grupo starts their 2023 mango programs with even more volume, more capacity and more varietals. It’s exciting for me to witness their growth and see the family rewarded with recognition from the industry, retailers, wholesalers and processors.
