It was happiness. We fought together some severe pest attack and survived.
This little budded tree on my balcony gave a real tasty naadan (local small variety) mango.
Enjoyed, just like in the traditional way. First tasted the remains left on the andy (seed). Then had the two thin ones called palaka pool (plank pooled portion) and finally the best parts the metthha pools (the thick bigger cuts). Bliss.
What if I grow a new one from the seed.
Plants In The Balcony
I visited a plant nursery yesterday and bought some plants for the balcony. The person who helped me bringing them up from the car to the balcony mentioned that citrus is not an ideal home plant.
I am not claiming that I don’t believe in superstition, and traditions are to be respected. So I turned to google.
First, it’s not the lime he’s talking about, but I got mandarin orange and sweet orange plants.
Orange trees are Feng Shui friendly. Then there are locational guidelines.
Accordingly, the orange plants are on the South West of house. See I don’t pay heed to superstition 😉
I am most thrilled at the ‘all seasons, dwarf mango trees’. Imagine mangoes in your balcony; all season.
Total Bliss.
AN END OF SEASON DELIGHT
I have done this type of preparation a couple of times before. But there are some reasons for doing it again.
COCONUT MILK, CHIA SEED, PUDDING
Mango season is going away! And I haven’t made the chia seed inspired, falooda like, healthy, display friendly, dessert.
And here it is.
Soaked in thick coconut milk and refrigerated, chia seeds form layers, in between mango, pineapple, papaya, musli and pumpkin seeds fillings, in glasses. Honey is poured in to the attractive layers.
Thank you @neethu.nambiar1 for the inspiring idea, two years back.
How about plucking mangoes from your balcony! That too all season.
Well, if the claims are true, that’s what I may have in our balcony.
These bonsai, cloned, budded trees are on sale.
I once had a dream of high High density mango plantation. Perhaps, this could be an alternative.
At least, I love the idea.
We bought three Imam Pasand mangoes online from a local store.
These are the best mangoes we tasted this season and it was at a reasonable price of ₹100.
Some private mango growers offer the same mango at ₹300 calling them organic.
There’s an offer from Organic Mango Farmers Association, Muthalamada, which is the mango place in Kerala. Their prices are in the range of ₹25 per kg for local varieties and ₹70 the highest for the premium Alphonso mangoes. They need help as they can’t export.
The minimum order is 20 kg, but delivery charges to anywhere in Kerala is only ₹200. Kerala based people can contact Benny at mobile 8547297584 or 9446437584. They will send matured raw mangoes which get done in a couple of days.
I wish that fruit and vegetable stores get them in bulk and deliver through solicited online orders after a decent marked up profit.
Consumers get good organic mangoes at reasonable prices and the growers who can’t export are assisted.
Remember Ruchir Sharma in Financial Times ‘Billionaire Boom: How Covid cash ended up in the wallets of the rich’.
Many of us might have seen some inexplicable surge in our stock market portfolio, while common people are suffering in this pandemic times.
We should invoke the Personal Social Responsibility (ISR if CSR is not working)
It’s not Alphonso, or for that matter other popular varieties like Banganapalli or Malgoa that comes to my mind when it’s on the best mangoes. It’s Chandrakaaran.
And there are many varieties within shankarakaaran, depending actually on the tree for it’s taste and goodness.
The best of the best then is seen in the image here. It’s from the mango tree in our residential compound.
Coming in the category of ‘naattu maav’ (local mango tree), the fruits are grown in bunches, but small in size.
Eating them is simple. Just wash them well and consume including the skin. The pulp is fibrous and extremely juicy and tasty.
I just had one and the seed left behind is carefully planted in a pot and kept on the balcony. When it comes out, I will transfer it to our land in the hometown.
If you get a chance to find some of them, just grab them. By the way, all of them are not this extremely tasty. But you can smell the taste.
‘Manga Thera’ is best made from the local variety of small sized, delicious naadan mangoes (local variety), grown on huge trees in bunches.
The process takes several days with extracting the juice and spreading on grass mats mixed with rice powder and sugar and dried in sunlight for several days. Each day a new layer is spread on top till its about half inches thick.
The dried output is then cut into pieces as in the picture below.
This lasts for years and are uniquely delicious.
We have a huge tree in our hometown land and my brother brought a few for me of these lovely small mangoes.
The first thing that came to my mind was to make thera but lacked the resources right now.
So an innovation set in and I extracted the juice, added rice powder and baked. As in my trade mark, there’s no added sugar.
It could have been better with a little less rice powder, but the bars are still so delicious with the taste and aroma of the naadan mango.
The big tree in the picture must be some 100 years old and bears thousands of the small sized mangoes, with bunches sometimes holding 20 to 25 mangoes.
Kurian 