Good Eats-Mangoes

When we first arrived in Hyderabad, my driver from the airport told me that mango season was just starting. Now, mangoes are my absolute favorite tropical fruit. Bill and I have the bar set pretty high when it comes to mangoes: they are all compared to "the ones we bought on the side of the road in St. Thomas." Just the mention of them causes a Pavlovian response for me. My first trip to the grocery store made me realize that were more kinds of mangoes than I had ever anticipated. There are some that are best for eating, best for pickling, best for chutneys, best for this and that, and best for juice.

The other day, our friend, Bill's co-worker, and Hyderabad native, Anjali brought us some mangoes that her dad had picked for us. One type was for eating, the other was for juice. Not realizing that there were 'juice' mangoes, I was very intrigued. The instructions were to wash the outside of the mango really well, massage it, pull off the stem, hold the mango up to your mouth and drink. Wow oh wow. Nectar from the gods! I started making sounds like my buddy Carmine does when he eats a meatball sub: Mmm...oh...MMM..ohhh... Not wanting to overdose on enjoyment I squeezed the remaining pulp from the pit, and squeezed another full mango into a cereal bowl. The bowl was full(!) from the juice of 2 mangoes. Heaven...I'm in heaven... Then to save it for later, I poured my sweet mango elixir into popsicle molds, dropped in some craft sticks and popped the molds into the freezer. Frozen fresh squeezed mango-pops...life is good.