Lazy days

The Monkey's daycare had its annual mango fundraiser this year and being the avid fan of them that I am (though the rest of the family are largely indifferent) promptly ordered a case. What could be better than a case of summery smelling golden fruit? Well nothing as it seems, except for the fact that those glorious TWENTY mangoes all ripened on exactly the same day, and fan that I am, eating 20 over say 3 days did not seem like a particularly good idea. Which left me with a mound of ripe fruit and no clue what to do with it. How many smoothies *can* you foist upon your children?

The only things I could think of were mango chutney and mango icecream. Which was helpful as I know not how to make either one. We sent forth dispatches to older relatives who may be in the know with such mysteries as the making of preserves et al and was summarily informed that the family chutney recipe requires green mangoes. Ergo... crap. Luckily we live in the age of the great God of Internet and I was soon sifting through recipes, discarding left right and centre "...then pick 3 chilis by the light of the full moon and allow to moisten in morning dew..." and settled on 2 simplish but tasty looking recipes.

The first Homemade Mango Chutney which looked bright and cheerful and had no ingredients that forced me to try and find a disreputable dealer. So I boiled that up this morning and I must say the cheery golden, red flecked result looks pretty damn good. And is very tasty as well though quite sweet - next time I will reduce the sugar and add a tablespoon of seasalt (I don't like chutney to be too sweet).

The second Mango Sorbet, though technically it is more of an icecream (just without the egg). I just whipped that up and have to say I licked every bit of my spoon clean after I stored it safely in the freezer. Very very yummy. I actually doubled the recipe and made about 2L? It is much prettier than the one in the photo, American/European recipes seem to use rather boring pale mangoes.

I still have about 8 mangoes left so am thinking of making a mango cheesecake tomorrow to take to a family BBQ which will eat up another few, and if that's good I'll repeat it for Christmas Eve dinner. I've also marinated the fruit for my pudding which I'm trying to garner the enthusiasm to cook, as it's currently 36 degrees and boiling a pudding for 4 hours does not sound thrilling. But I love it still, even though the kitchen is buried in my preparation tools and I cna't muster the energy to shove it all in the dishwasher :blush:.

I also have the stuff there to make another batch of my patented rumballs, some rocky road and the ginger biscuits and then all the Christmas cooking aside from the turkey is done. Yum yum yum.

Yesterday the Elfling and I relished our last day on our own by tramping all over the city to organise my registration with the medical board (lot of paperwork, why does that not surprise me?) and then came home and wrapped all the presents. Loathing the expense and the generic-ness of wrapping paper this year we used her portfolio from kindy (lots of A3/A2) paintings as the wrap, setting aside the very best ones. The result is a unique and colourful tree and I don't feel guilty about sort of disposing of the MOUNTAINS of paper and paintings we get presented with at the end of the year. When blogger stops being a PITA with resizing photos I'll post some.

Love Christmas, love it.