“It’s mango season. Can get so many for little!” This explanation accompanied my friend giving me a bag of three ripe mangos.

My friend is an amazing cook. She’s been running a lunch/dinner business from her home since the pandemic and publishes a menu every Sunday night for us to order from for the week. When we were allowed on campus, she would deliver all of our food to the teacher workroom. Now, with tighter lockdowns, she packs up her car and visits all of the residences in the local area (food delivery is categorized as an essential service) and gives us all amazing food experiences.

I’m so grateful for her. She’s not only introduced all of us to local cuisine – Malaysian chilli, sambal belacan, tikka masala – but she’s also tried to make us expats feel a little more at home by making her take on Olive Garden’s salad, Tex-Mex tacos, and, my personal favorite, chicken enchiladas.

Over the past few months, she’s become a good friend, helping me learn a few Bahasa phrases and giving me tips on where to find good baking supplies when she found out that I love to bake.

So when she gave me a bag of mangos, I knew exactly what to do with them.

I found a recipe for a mango crumble and experimented over the weekend. We don’t have an oven in our apartment, just a small toaster oven, so baking can be a mixed bag as our toaster oven likes to burn half of whatever we put in there and leave the rest raw. But, after a couple of rough goes, the treats started coming together.

And today, when she came to drop off my food, I was waiting with a container filled with three of my best attempts.

“Ah, what’s this?”

“An exchange, thought you’d like try some of the things your mangos went into!”

We thanked each other for the food and parted ways.

A few minutes later, a text message popped up on my phone: eaten one of the cookies while driving. sangat sedap. very nice.

I tucked into her Stir Fried Black Pepper Beef, sending a message back, Lunch is very nice too.

Sangat sedap indeed.