Mango Colada
For the school where I teach, today was our first official day to re-engage with our students. The way our administration set up the schedule, I only had two Google Meet sessions today, for which I only used about 30 minutes each (out of 45 minutes allotted – we are not required to keep the students online the whole time). In addition, I reformatted an assignment into a Google Form for each class. That’s all I did for work today, and I’m exhausted!
To be honest, I didn’t do any actual instruction today during our Google Meets, but rather I checked in with my students, asked how everyone was doing, and tried to answer any questions they had. I felt it was more important just to be a calm and caring adult presence for them, before expecting anything academic. It was great to see them and I was happy to hear everyone is doing well! Some students have everyone at home; others have household members who work at the hospital or in nursing homes, who are providing pastoral care, or who work in the court system and have had to go in at times for matters that couldn’t be continued to a later date.
In any event, I am much more exhausted than I imagined I would be, so I’m pretty happy to offer Hank’s idea, which was a delicious and welcome treat this evening.
Last week we had to stock up on groceries and the mangos looked nice, so I bought one with the idea of putting it into a salad. As I was about to cut into it for a salad, Hank said, “What about trying a mango colada?” Brilliant idea! We may never make a regular old piña colada again!
For what it’s worth, cutting a mango is not so easy, in that you never get every bit of flesh right up to the pit. For something like this, I like to use a vegetable peeler and then cut off as much as I can, leaving the pit. Others like to cut off the “cheeks” of the mango and score the flesh with a cross-hatch pattern. Then you can flip the piece “inside out” and scrape the flesh off the skin. It also a good way to do it, but I always feel like I leave too much delicious mango sticking to the skin this way.
Mango Colada
Makes 2 drinks
1 medium mango peeled and cut into cubes
¼ cup cream of coconut
3 ounces rum, or to taste
Juice of ½ lime
12 ice cubes
Place all ingredients into a blender. and mix at high speed until the ice is fully broken down to slush. Pour and enjoy!