Mango Banana Tango

If you've any passion at all for a ripe MANGO, this is one to try. And so simple.

You don't even need an ice cream maker.

Pop 4 ripe (that means FRECKLED SKIN, folks, no greenies here) bananas into the freezer. I usually peel and cut them up first. Some folks freeze with skin on. Run them under some water to defrost the skin, they'll peel fairly easily.


Likewise, with a couple of ripe mangos - peeled, cut into chunks and into the freezer. You want about 2 cups of mango. Or fetch some from the frozen food department at your market.


Question of the day: how can you tell if a mango is ripe? IT WEEPS for you! Truly. Look at the stem end. If you don't see some shiny sticky nectar marks around the stem, sometimes even running down the side, it ain't ripe!

ANYWAY. Back to ice cream. Oh yes, we're making ice cream.

When the fruit is frozen, put it all in your food processor with the S-blade. Blitz until it turns into a frozen ice cream confection. You may have to push it down a few times.

Purty stuff, eh? I borrowed the photos, not to mention the recipe, from one of my fav blogs, http://rawon10.blogspot.com/ .

Those are marigold petals. Yep, you can eat marigolds. Some are tastier than others. Or just use them for garnish to prettify a dish. Won't poison you, and sooo easy!

OK. Thhhhhats all, folks. Go forth and gather you some RIPE bananas and mangos.

It ain't spring 'til the Springers run...

My brother Chris has only one set-in-stone priority in his life: when the Spring Chinook hit the bay, don't expect to see him until about July.

Springers are the Grand Prize for those of us who love salmon. When they come in from sea for spawning, they are fat from winter feeding, whereas the fall chinook have dallied around and lost that good cold-water fat. You just can't beat the Springers for flavor, deep color, and a nice tussle on the line.

Since Chris loves to fish but doesn't care to eat much of it, he is generous with sharing his catch. We are very spoiled. Sometimes he drops off a few slices, sometimes a whole fish, and when the stars are lined up, we get his outstanding smoked salmon!


Salmon fishing is an art and a science. Chris has fished the Tillamook bay and rivers all his life, and we swear he "thinks fish". He catches them when no one else in surrounding boats have any luck at all.

This week, after a slow start, the Springers have finally started showing up. Here's Chris' first catch of the season...

Oh oh. He forgot, in all the excitement, to take off his leaders and stash that hook set-up in his special box. Now anyone who knows what they are looking at will know he was fishing with herring - the double hooks are a dead give-away. NFL playbooks and signals have nothing on the secrecy of fishermen...don't expect a straight answer from ANY of them if you happen to ask, "Where'd you catch that one?" And beyond strategy are secret techniques for handling bait, for tying hooks, weight of line, and on and on.

Here's one of Chris' special little rituals: he rinses his hooks in soapy water. He has a special container in the boat, which as far as we know no one else packs along. And not just any soap. It's lemon Joy. Chris swears the fish like lemon. We're not arguing. Actually, he does it to get the salt water off the hooks, so they don't rust or dull the tips. As he commented, the hooks are so sharp now that all a fish has to do is get close, and it's a goner.

Speaking of secret formulas. This bucket contains bottles of special scents and other stuff that we were fearful to ask about - if he told us (which he wouldn't - not even his mother), he'd have to cut our tongues out. It's amusing to watch guys casually strolling by boats, eyeballing the gear and whatever else they might spy out.

But when the results are nice fat hen Springers, you can see why the competition gets a little heated. And goofy, at times.

This is Chris' "I got one!" grin!

As he motored up the bay to the Kilchis River launch where hauled out, he had to pass a number of other boats. Everyone knows everyone else out there, and they love getting the best of each other. So when they ask, as he goes by, "How you'd do?" , Chris says very offhand, "Got two." Boo hiss from the unlucky empty boats!

Chris reports that one fellow on the dock was saying it was pretty bad fishing, no one had caught any yet. Then he saw the two shiny Springers in Chris' fish box. "Guess the season has officially started now, Griffin caught the first fish!"