African Adventure: What would you do with 96 Mangoes?

Perhaps it was because I hadn't had my Costco "fix" in awhile (missed using my Canadian excessiveness gene) or perhaps it was because I'm a sucker for a good deal (yup that's it) but last week I bought 96 mangoes. We on the way back from Lilongwe, a four hour drive to the capital and back for police clearance for our visas (a blog post in itself...), when our driver decided to stop for some mangoes in a small village between Machinga and Liwonde only about an hour outside of Zomba. Hundreds of mango trees lined the highway along with dozens of locals and their kids hoping to entice motorists to buy the fleshy and juicy fruit. Buying local fruit direct from the grower and organic to boot (almost everything here is organic as modern pesticides are too expensive ...although fertilizers are often used), was too good to pass up, oh...and the price was right at about 3 cents a mango (they go for 12 cents in the local market), the whole lot for 500 kwachas (less than 3 bucks).

Being convinced I needed mangoes while Danny snuck a photo.

The fruit in Malawi is incredible from mangoes, pineapples, and bananas, to passion fruit, lycees, and papayas. What's more incredible for me (coming from a non-tropical region) is to see these fruit growing nonchalantly all over Zomba, "Wow, a papaya tree or banana tree!" Nowadays, mangoes are the fruit in season and everywhere I see kids sneaking a mango off their neighbour's tree, throwing rocks at the tree above, hoping a ripe mango will fall to earth.

So after giving away about 30 and eating at least 3 a day (between the 2 of us) I had to do something with the quickly ripening fruit. There were some great suggestions on this blog and by email but given the availability of supplies and ingredients I opted for freezer jam ....yummy (no jars, no pectin). I used about 10 pounds to make the jam but we still have about 30 or so left, so shakes and juice will be the quick answer there, although I may just freeze the pulp for future use as my tastebuds are becoming desensitized to the awesome mango flavour.