Feeling the urge to right a food wrong, today I baked this strawberry lime mango crisp from the Oh She Glows blog.

I’m not a big dessert person, which was evident when I went to save this recipe on my Pinterest account and realized I didn’t even have a board for desserts. But it caught my eye when reading the blogger’s newsletter, since strawberries are in season and soooooo delish. And the combination with mango and lime was inviting. My original plan was to make it on the week-end, but an unforeseen food fiasco led to it being made today.

It started with yesterday’s bio delivery. After putting nearly everything away, I grabbed a package that contained turkey cutlets and realized the outside paper used to wrap the (supposedly) sealed cutlets in plastic was…leaking. At first, I thought maybe something got wet beside it, but the sinking feeling in my stomach intensified as I realized it was indeed coming from the packaging. Ugh!

After hubby’s bad bout with food poisoning a few years back (thanks to a bad burger at an airport), we take ‘when in doubt, throw it out’ quite seriously. But, it wasn’t only the turkey I had to consider tossing…it was all the fresh veggies, fruit and cheese I ordered, too (including the mango and lime for my crisp recipe) as they were nestled together in the same box. Just the thought of the turkey juice being in contact with the produce and cheese made me nauseous, and as much as I hate wasting food, I just couldn’t take the risk. So, out it all went. Teen T’s chocolate mousse was one of few things that was saved.

All the tossing and madly scrubbing the fridge and hanging basket where I had originally placed the veggies, fruit and cheese, significantly delayed starting dinner. And of course, plans that night were turkey schnitzel for Teen T and a kohlrabi schnitzel for me. Luckily, I had purchased the kohlrabi earlier that day at the grocery store, so it wasn’t one of the veggie victims. But the turkey cutlets I tossed — were intended for Teen T’s schnitzel. *sigh*

While Teen T assembled a stuffed Gyros panini leftover from Sunday night’s meal, I prepared my schnitzel (tried to convince him to try a veggie version…he wasn’t buying it). Likely due to being distracted by thoughts of food contamination (did I clean everything?), my hands raw from washing them a gazillion times, and cooking a recipe for the first time, my schnitzels turned out rather…soggy.

“Maybe next time you should get Dad to show you how to make them,” offered Teen T.

He was 100% accurate, with 100% bad timing. I think he knew with the look I flashed him.

This morning, I spent close to half an hour crafting an email to the bio delivery service (yeah, my German still sucks), explaining about the leaky turkey and my decision to toss nearly everything, with a mention of hoping to receive a credit at the end. I was pretty certain they would reimburse me for the turkey, but I wasn’t sure what their position would be on the rest. It’s the first time it happened.

But guess what? They called a few hours later, apologizing profusely, and confirming that everything would be compensated in full. It made my day!

Later in the afternoon, I went shopping to replace what I had thrown out and came across a perfectly ripe mango (unlike the one I received and threw away). And so, I was inspired to come home and bake the crisp – feeling the need to make something yummy to celebrate food, after being faced with the darker side of it the evening before.

Fresh out of the oven and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, this crisp was YUM and the perfect sweet ending.

(Note: I made a few modifications to the recipe, mainly because I didn’t have all the listed ingredients. Instead of arrowroot powder I used corn starch, regular instead of coconut sugar, regular flour instead of almond and I omitted the shredded coconut only because I’m not a fan. The combination of the lime zest and juice really added nice flavour and smells in-cred-i-ble as it bubbles and bakes. Can I have a candle of that smell, please?)