Tropical Flavors

When I bought that case of mangos the other day, the sales clerk said, "What are you going to do with all of those?"  I smiled and said, "Oh, they'll be gone in 3 days."  And they are!  Although, only half of them went to jam.  The rest just got eaten.  Even Mocha, our rabbit, gets to have some - we give him a pit and he vacuums it clean.  He doesn't get all of them; that would be too much fruit for our little bunny!

I finished up the last 4 today by making Mango-Pineapple jam.  Since I didn't have a lot of sugar in the house and I was concerned about all the reports about this particular combination needing extra pectin, I decided to use the low sugar pectin instead.  I think it worked out perfectly.

4 champagne mangos diced

1.5 cups pineapple chunks

1/4 cup lime juice

4.5 cups sugar

1 package powdered low sugar pectin

Blend the mangos and pineapple with an immersion blender but leave a few chunky pieces for texture. Mix with the pectin and lime juice, bring to a boil.  Add the sugar all at once and boil the usual way.  This made 6 cups and a little bit more.

Well, that's it for the mangos.  Maybe we can start in on some violets soon?  They should be blooming in the next week or so.

Something Exciting!

Finally I found time and fruit and energy all at the same time, and have made my first batch of jam in 2014!

The local Whole Foods had crates of champagne mangos on sale - 16 mangos in a case.  Yay!  Not only do we love those mangos, I was looking for something to do over the next few days.  So I picked up a case, 2 boxes of strawberries, and a pineapple.  In 2 hours we've already used 5 mangos.  Today's batch is strawberry-mango jam.

3.5 champagne mangos, crushed

2 cups crushed strawberries

1 box powdered pectin

6 cups sugar

This makes 8 cups of jam.

In other news, the 8 year old became 9 recently and we had a party based upon a favorite video game (Skyrim).  We had a scavenger hunt, a shield-decorating station, foam swords and even magic spells which were confetti-filled colored eggs.  It was quite the success.  Here's the cake (it's the Skyrim logo, a big dragon):

Nothing Exciting

Really, nothing exciting.  Just made a batch of chicken stock as I was all out.  Also, I've got a batch of yogurt doing its thing.  My last batch didn't work again, not sure if there wasn't enough yogurt left to start the next batch or if it was too old.  Regardless, I bought new starter so this one should be just fine. I'm just itching for spring to really settle in and the plants to start growing again!