One of those weekends

Thursday was a public holiday here, and Friday was a fun day at school for the boys. Exams are over, homework is almost unheard of, the holidays will be here in a week, and celebration and happiness are in the air.

We spent the last four days getting ready for summer in many little ways. On Thursday morning, Sam and I went out in the dew of dawn and picked up as many perfect mangoes as we could from under the trees. Chirpy helped. Chas also climbed the Julie Mango trees, to get some more. Pictured here are Calabash, Rose and Julie Mangoes.

Then, Max helped me peel and cut them. At least that's what he said he was doing. After a while he changed his job description to "Mango Taster" and tasted till he had to lie down on the kitchen floor holding his belly and going "Noooo! No more!"
I think Max ate about ten mangoes, but Sam was helping too. Sam and I made "chow" with chadon beni (cilantro?), pepper sauce, garlic etc and ate it till steam was coming out of our ears. The next step was to put the sliced mangoes (not the chow) into Ziploc bags, and freeze them. This way, we will have mangoes for the rest of the year, for smoothies and on icecream! Frozen mangoes taste like canned syrupy fruit when thawed. Deeeelicious!




Today, we had fun with cashews. The nut hangs below the fruit, as you can see in the photo. The cashew nuts are encased in a pod which leaks a horrible, staining, caustic oil on everything. It is inedible, until roasted. The fruit is edible, but an acquired taste. I bet it would make a great jam or something, but we haven't figured it out yet.








When the nuts heat up, the horrible black oil comes bubbling out, and the whole lot bursts into glorious flame.

Which was not part of the plan.



Well, see? It wasn't a TOTAL disaster! Great fun was had by family and visitors alike, and Mum even spirited all of the kids away to her house to make tie-dyed t-shirts!


We made fudge all weekend, too, to give to all of the boys' teachers and beloved aunties at school, who take such good care of them there. A lot of the fudge got eaten today, even though everyone ate so much food at lunchtime we all swore we would never eat again! So we made some more tonight.

I am totally exhausted just thinking about our busy weekend! Funny, I was fine before I sat down to think about it. Here's to many more impromptu Sunday Lunches, friends arriving at breakfast time with cake, and sudden changes of plan.