According to the locals there are two only seasons in Nicaragua; Winter and Summer or what the discovery channel calls the rainy and the dry seasons. If you ask any Nicaraguan farmer that is worth his salt as to when the rainy seasons begins he will say "winter technically begins in May, but the first rain is always May 15th." I would like to let you know that they were all wrong this year. The rains came on May 13th.
Have you ever witnessed a glut of any kind in the market? It happens on a large scale from from time to time on the commodities market but I think we may not notice that often. The only time we really notice in my country is when the gas prices drop drastically. I am not yet in my 30th year and I can say that I remember when gas cost 87 cents a gallon, that was a glut of sorts.
I have a new instance that is sharp on my mind that is not yet a memory because I am still living it. It is the mango glut! Two months ago the trickle started.
As I would work at the butterfly garden in the zoo the two full timers would occasionally come in the room with green mangos. I had heard of people eating green mangos - mostly I had heard about the Colombian folk doing it. In my head I always labeled those kind of people as impatient. Why would you eat a green mango when you can wait a week or so and have a ripe one? The reason, is that when you slice it up and then squeeze lime on it and mix in some salt and some spicy peppers it turns into something that will make your taste buds sing new songs. Fortunately the generosity of those two guys surpassed my eating habits, otherwise I might have come off looking
like a greedy glutton. They started sending me home with bags of mangos. I thought that they were nuts to send me home with 20 mangos every time i turned up to the zoo. I was convinced that I was robbing them of a very pricey delicacy. (where I am from the mangos that you can get are all imported from Mexico and if you are lucky you might find them for around 80 cents a pop.) I was wrong. Turns out that the zoo is built on an old mango plantation and each one of the trees that are still left produce around 3 to 5 thousand per year. A wheelbarrow can hold around 300 mangos, and we collected between 10 to 20 wheelbarrows full of mangos from each tree.
Not only did the zoo have an over abundance of mango trees but so did the orphanage, Laura Vicunca -the school on the volcano, and Melania Layaco -the school for kids with special needs. In the past two months except for the two weeks that I went home (did i tell you i went home?) my mango consumption has become a bit comical. My first experiment came from some inspiration from an uncle of mine that had made a berry cobbler. I got his recipe and did the same thing but with mangos. Mine came out good but not great - I blame it on my oven. From there I took to copying my work friends at the zoo, and started making green mango salads on a 5 times a week basis. Then the mangos found their way to the blender and with the help of some milk and ice cubes, mango smoothies were born. From their I started finding my way to the base of the mango trees during the break between the Ag. and English classes that we are teaching. I would put away about 5 of them in less than then 10 minutes. I got so skilled at peeling them with my teeth that I am convinced that I can now do it better than any Cutco pearing knife could ever dream of. Then they found their way to our Thursday night family dinners in the form of a mango marinade on sunfish and a mango,basil,spinich salad. My Nicaraguan friends think I have gone a bit overboard and they even laugh about it from time to time. When that happens I just let them know that I was 25 years old the first time I tried a mango and that I am doing my best to make up for lost time.
It was all a tasty experience but there was something missing. You see, I am a first generation city dweller and as such I had the privilege of going out to the country as a child to visit parts of my family. On both sides my grandparents still lived in the country and both sets were active for the entirety of my childhood in making jellies and jams. I had seen it done and even participated in it a number of times, but I had never been the head jelly chef. It was my turn. So this past Sunday I took Hemmingway and a chair to the kitchen and read as I stirred the three varieties of mango that I had peeled and then put on to boil. In the three hours I was their I learned some pretty important lessons.
1. a plastic collander is a perfectly acceptable substitute for a metal chinois strainer
2. pectin is not necessary for your jelly to set right. I think it is actually better without it because the jelly spreads easier.
3. washed plastic peanut butter jars are just as good to put your jelly in as your glass mason jars that have been dipped in a scalding hot water bath. You may not be able to store them as long term, but I was looking for immediate consumption so that is ok.
I suppose if I wanted to be faithful to my roots the only part lacking now would be to give one of the jelly jars away to someone. Besides, how Magnum can the mango jelly be if it is only recognized as such by it's maker? Can I interest anyone in some jelly?
