How to Make an Old Codger's Mango Sauce

I read this article on how to eat mangos but couldn't figure out what a mango was until my great, great grandson showed me one.

We didn't have mangos in my day. We had apples - worm filled, bruised, almost rotten apples that had lain on the ground for weeks - and we were grateful to have them. Those of us who survived eating them had the trots for weeks and a newfound respect for life after our constitutions returned to normal.

Those were simpler times.

Now you young folks have these...these mangos. They're hard to eat unless you know one of the techniques I read in this article. Apples? Why, we just scooped them off the ground and ate them core and all! But mangos? Nnnnoooo! You can't eat their pits! Even if you do have all your teeth. Which I don't.

But even though my Social Security Number is a single digit, I'm still young enough to learn a thing or two - like how to make a delicate yet vibrant sauce out of your fancy pants new fangled fruit.

First, you need to get the goldarn mango out of its skin and away from its pit. I porcupine it like it says in this article. I had to get a whipper snapper to enlarge the print on the screen so I could actually read it. Why's all the print so small on this here glowing box? I'm cold. Where's my sweater?

Once you've got some cubes, you need to get the juice out of it. Now, you young 'uns will probably use one of them there electric juicers. But we didn't have juicers back in my day. We stomped on things with our feet - our scaly, flaking, dirty feet - and we were happy to be able to do that! Eventually, someone got the idea to use a mortar and pestle to squish and grind stuff. But that just seems like taking the easy way out to me. Once electricity was invented, somebody else decided to pulverize stuff in a blender, and then run it through two strainers to get the rest out.

You young 'uns don't know how lucky you got it!

No matter how you get the juice out, now you got juice. But that's only good for one thing - mixing with home made liquor! It ain't sauce yet so don't go pouring it all over stuff. Your generation is so goldarn impatient! Why's everything rush, rush, rush?!?

To make it a sauce, you have to add stuff to it. Now, I know you're thinking this sounds too much like work. It is work. That's why we had so many kids back in the day - so we could have free slave labor.

Somebody told me to juice a whole lime into the mango juice and since I didn't know any better, I did it. And I liked it! But it was still juice! The same somebody wrote me a note to keep this horn next to my ear so I could hear the rest of the instruction. Blah! Blah! Blah! Is that all you whipper snappers do? Talk people ears off, run around naked and stare at this glowing box? No wonder we're headed to hell in a hand basket!

Once I put the hearing contraption next to my ear, he told me to thicken the juice. That just sounded a little too racy to me, but he kept yammering on and on even while I clutched my chest. He said onion powder is a good way to thicken the sauce, and that mango and onion are natural companions.

For the record: we didn't use such foul language when I was your age!

He also said that I could spice things up. I told him young people have too much goldarn spice and that's why we're all doomed - DOOMED, I tell you! But he kept flappin' his gums about adding a pureed habenero because of its citrus taste before it knocks you on your arse.

So I asked him what I could do with this sauce now that I made it. He says to me, he says, he says, "you can put it on pork, chicken, ice cream and beef."

Ice cream. Yeah, ice cream. Apparently, the sweetness works well on vanilla and the heat from the hot pepper provides a nice contrast.

Of course, he kept right on talking and talking. He said a couple drops around the plate add to visual appeal, as well!

Is that all you young 'uns think about? Visual appeal? We didn't have that back in my day! We had plain and ugly. And we were happy to have that!