July 12, 2012:
A Fruitful Season
Michael Jasa and Jenny Klimova display one of their favorite mango creations, the Crab-mango-stack. (Robert Duyos, Sun Sentinel / July 12, 2012)
It’s raining mangoes all over South Florida. Those with a super bounty of the tropical fruits are struggling to keep up as backyard trees as well as commercial groves yield one of the biggest crops in years.
Mango lovers can thank a mild winter that pushed blooms out two months ahead of time. “We haven’t had any freezes and it wasn’t as windy. They started flowering very early this year — we had blooms in February,” said Arthur Kierstein, who works with commercial mango growers through the Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences in Palm Beach County. “We have six or seven trees out back at the Mounts [Botanical Garden] and they’re all fully loaded.”
Every year, Ingrid Hugel, of Lake Worth, gets together with friends or family and cooks up a few gallons of mango chutney. Yes, gallons.
“It’s so delicious!” Hugel raves about the recipe she clipped more than two decades ago from a newspaper. “I have tried a lot of recipes, but this is the best. It makes a very large batch, though. You have to have help. Chopping is the hard work.”
View the complete article at The Sun Sentinel
