Today's project? Fruit Roll ups.
It's mango season here. Which means for the next few weeks kids (and adults) will eat almost nothing besides mangoes. There are so many they fall of the trees and just rot because people can't eat them fast enough. Mangoes are loaded with good stuff. But the trees only produce once a year. So for the other 11 and a half months they don't get the benefits. So I'd been brain storming preservation ideas. Canning was out. Canning jars, rings, lids, seals- all way too hard to get here and way too expensive for the ugandans I would like to target. So I thought about drying them. But they are so wet and mushy when ripe. Others have tried salting them but I've tried it that way and really didn't like it.
So, with the help of the ever present neighbor kids, we gathered about 20 mangoes from my tree, peeled, pitted and mashed. Then I cooked the paste for a few minutes to make it all one consistency. Then spread it on well oiled cookie sheets and let it sit in the sun all day. About 10 hours this close to the equator seems like enough.
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| On chairs on black trash bags. Initially I had them flat on the ground but the chickens kept trying to walk through them. |
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| My oven thermometer reads nearly 150 degrees. |
Tastes like chewy, dried mango, which is what I was going for I think.
1 comment:
Jennifer,
That sounds delicious :) (unlike some other unnnamed foods you've blogged about recently...!) That is a GREAT idea and definitely sounds like something the locals could do without too much difficulty. I had to laugh at the Betty Crocker box of fruit roll ups because I'm guessing very few, if any, Ugandans have ever seen that. I think you should call it "Mango a'la Kragt." :)
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