Purée a bunch of mangoes in a blender or food processor.

Add a little sugar to the mangoes and blend some more.

Pour this mixture into a shallow pan.

Let freeze for 2 hours.

Blend this mixture again. Set aside.

Whip some heavy whipping cream with sugar and vanilla till it forms peaks.

Add the blended frozen mango mixture to the whipped cream.

Mix well and then return to the freezer

in the container you want to keep your ice cream in.

Freeze for 3-4 more hours and voila–Mango Ice Cream.

Invite your friends over and get ready for a treat.

It’s the creamiest, best thing we’ve ever eaten.

 I know I did’t give you measurements** for the ingredients,

because I often just wing it.

That’s what I did here, and I think I should have used more

mangoes to how much whipped cream I used.

Next time.

Trust me, that next time will be soon.

You get the hang of it, right?

**I used about half what is in this bowl with about 2 cups of whipping cream.

Sugar it up, but mangoes are super sweet. You don’t need much.

No matter how you do it, if you love mangoes, you’ll love the end product.

Go for it!

Millions of mangos! Our friends, Bill and Shauna have mangos coming on their old 3-story tall mango trees. These close neighbors open their beautiful place for friends to come pick mangos.

We got two five-gallon buckets FULL of the gorgeous fruit yesterday. We’re in mango heaven right now.

These mangos below are going to “Hippy Steve” to feed his pigs.

Steve doesn’t live far from Bill and Shauna’s place.

I estimate that they have 15-20 beautiful mango trees, not to mention all the palms and ornamentals and agave (for tequila). The agave are in the forefront of the photo below.

Heavy with Mangos.

The trees and the ground are covered in this tasty fruit.

See the buckets in Little Red (our Polaris)?

This place is lush with beauty and talk about peaceful.

It doesn’t get better than this.

You can imagine how many birds show up here.

Below are the pits and peelings (looking down inside the bucket yesterday).

I actually love this photo for some reason. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s pretty.

Tomorrow’s post will show you the ice cream and I’ll explain how I process mangos for using in our smoothies, etc.  Come back tomorrow for more mango news from beautiful Pescadero in Baja California Sur.

Riding in my VW Van down the dirt road, I’m singing that old Elvis Presley tune, “I’m all Shook Up.” That’s because dirt roads are anything but smooth. Everywhere we go here in the Baja, except for the highways and a few select roads here and there, we’re bouncing around getting all shook up.

Taxes in other countries are in sufficient amounts that the roads get paved. Nice. Smooth. Dreamy roads. But where we live, the roads have ruts and dips and holes and copious amounts of bumps and rocks.

You get used to it. Sort of. Some days you don’t think about it and other days it drives you crazy.  Not that I need much help to be crazy. But that’s another issue.

Taxes also pay for libraries, police, fire fighters, parks, etc. Consequently the services here are minimal.

There are several reasons to think of our home in the Baja as paradise, but don’t be fooled. There are drawbacks. More than just dirt roads too, and I don’t usually write about them. I’m not going to go on and on about them now either. Maybe some other day.

Instead, I’ll just sing. These are my four words for today: “I’m all shook up!”

Oh wait. One thing: when #^*!! people drive 100 miles an hour on the dirt road in front of my house, the dirt comes in through my open doors and windows leaving a nice thick layer of dirt over everything. Oh, how I hate that.

What are they thinking? This is the Baja 1000?

Dirt road in front of my house.

After I sweep for the 3rd time today, I’ll get back to my zen.

Happy singing again: I’m all shook up!

Rhythmical flow,

movement of rolled stone,

rocking my world.

Waves crashing,

ocean gifts of stones and shells

rocking my world.

Peaceful waves

 pounding, resounding,

rocking my world.

Searching shoreline,

plucking treasures from warm sand,

rocking my world.

Reconnecting stones,

nature’s pattern reinvented,

rocking my world.

Susie’s Rock Mosaic January 2016

Susie’s Wave Mosaic January 2013

Recently a dear friend of mine passed on a book to me entitled, Four Word Self Help, Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives. Don’t get me wrong. My life isn’t all that complex anymore, but this is a sweet book. I have chosen the four words: JUMP UP AND DOWN as my four words today.

Life has provided many opportunities for jumping up and down. I was a cheerleader in high school and did a fair amount of it. Don’t laugh. It was the only “sport” that girls were allowed back in my day. Title IX came long after I graduated from high school. Congratulations to all the girls and women who have been entitled to play sports since then. I’m jumping up and down for you.

It’s funny, but even as a 69 year old woman, I still jump for joy often. I’ve never stopped doing it and I highly recommend it to you. Let go! Show your happiness.

Here’s a photo of my 48 year old son and his 36 year old wife when they went on the whale shark trip in November last year with us. I didn’t ask them to jump up and down. They just did it.

Happiness is catching.

Makes you want to jump up and down, doesn’t it?

Each morning and each evening we are given the gifts of sunrise and sunset,

but they are especially full of nature’s song when you live by the ocean.

I greet each day with soft eyes, sometimes placing my hand on my heart. Sunrises will do that to me.

With each new day, we are offered a cessation of anxiety–if we take in the show.

Here is an offered gift from Nature telling us to be calm.

Moon set, early morning.

Sunrise means a pink sky and a pink ocean. How can you not be happy?

Lovely view from the beach to the mountains through the palms.

~~~

On the East Cape, Baja Sur, the sun rises over the ocean.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around that fact, as I’m originally from Southern California where the sun rises over the mountains.

But, it does indeed rise over the ocean on the East Cape.

It’s a glorious, full show of color with the morning birds looking for breakfast.

~~~

When the day leaves us,

I experience an overwhelming joy

that almost makes my heart ache as

I watch the sun fall into the ocean.

And then there’s the green flash.

We see it all the time from our deck. We see it more as a green glow, but the photos below were caught with our GoPro.

It does, indeed, appear as a flash in these shots.

We had it set to shoot every five seconds.

~

These are from different days. A green flash? Believe.

Things I learned about the green flash:

• REFRACTION: the bending of rays of light in passing from one medium to another (e.g., air to water)
• Green flashes are by-products of the large varieties in astronomical refraction near the horizon.
• Green flashes occur because the atmosphere can cause the light from the sun to separate out into different colors.

In my Baja world,

join me as

I take a deep breath

and

savor the moments of sunrise and sunset.

“On June 6, 1995 the President of Mexico, Mr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León  declared the waters of Cabo Pulmo as a National Marine Park.”

“In a study by Octavio Aburto, a scientist at the Scripps Institute in San Diego, the biomass of sea life has increased over 460%,  [since making it a reserve] making the Cabo Pulmo National Park the most recovered marine reserve in the world.”

from Oceanhealthindex.org

play hard

smile big

laugh loud

but don’t take the rocks

(it’s a marine reserve…Cabo Pulmo in Baja California Sur)

bring the dog

a couple of sandwiches

some oranges and a soda or two

but don’t go taking the shells or the coral or the rocks home with you

from Cabo Pulmo, a marine reserve in Baja California Sur

Check it out:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/most-successful-marine-reserve-cabo-pulmo-110812.htm

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/09/cabo-pulmo-national-marine-park-bajas-miracle-threatened/

http://www.cabopulmo.com/