when life hands you a mango....

Why not make jelly with it?

The jelly training was interesting to say the least. The first day of the training, the women showed up ready and excited at 9 o'clock sharp (something that I rarely see here in Honduras), only to have to wait 3 more hours until the woman showed up to do the training. It was an incredibly stressful event for me, calling the man who picked up the lady doing the training, trying to convince the women not to leave, and just stressing out in general over whether or not the idea to make jellies was grand, or a grand disaster.

Right when they showed up, though, the women went to work, preparing the jelly. I was impressed by their work ethic and enthusiasm. They also learned very quickly, most of the time much quicker than me. Various times, when I was trying to help the women cut the mangos, boil the jelly, or add the sugar, they would tell me "no, Elizabeth. It's like this, not like that. You have to do this."

The first day, we made mango jelly. As well as the second day. The third day, we moved onto papaya and banana jelly, and finally pineapple. I think I ate more sugar that week than I normally do in 2 months......but oh, was it worth it! The mango jelly is excellent. Not to sweet, not too mangoey, a perfect tropical flavor that would go well with any type of bread, or shortbread cookie. The pineapple is surprisingly sweet and tangy. Delicious, but very expensive to make, because one whole pineapple only makes about half a pound of jelly (about half the amount as mangoes, bananas and papayas). The papaya jelly was excellent as well. It has a pinkish color, and a rich, sweet flavor. The banana, although it may seem strange, was my favorite. The texture didn't really turn out to be very jelly-like, it had more of a texture of gerber baby food. But it was absolutely delicious.....a perfect topping or ingredient for chocolate cake!

So now, after making the jellies, we are trying to find a market for them. For now, we are just taking the jelly everywhere we go.....to celebrations, to fairs, etc. But I hope to find them a more permanent, steady market like at a supermarket, or even exporting them to the states! But we have to start small. And then think big........until next time.