Comparing Apples to Mangoes

Even the drops at the orchard look good!

Cortland, McIntosh, Gala, Empire, HoneyCrisp, Fuji, Liberty…It’s apple season, and one of the things on our Must-Do-Before-Returning-To-The-Islands List was apple picking.  So this past weekend we drove out to one of the orchards and picked apples to our hearts content, ate apple cider donuts, looked at the farm animals and generally immensely enjoyed a classic New England fall outing.

When Islanders think of apples they think of large wooden boxes from South Africa, carefully packaged with small, mealy, only somewhat crunchy, yellowish apples that sell for about a dollar a piece. There is only one kind of apple sold on the islands and they are expensive, not special, and not especially good. They are for eating raw and that’s pretty much it. Apples on the islands are nothing special.

How different from New England.  We have all kinds of apples from global markets in the grocery stores all year round, but when apple season comes to New England, we can buy apples by the sack full for a few dollars.  And everyone has their favorite varieties.  The cooks know which ones are best for baking, which are sweet, which are sour, which will hold their form and which will turn into sauce.  Then there are all the things we can do with apples: sauce, butter, cider, pies, crisps, crumbles, fritters, dumplings, donuts, soups, dried, canned, with caramel, candied, even ice cream flavors.  Apples are a versatile fruit.  

Kids carrying our apple-picking haul!

Just as apples are at their peak in New England, mangoes start ripening in other parts of the world.  Just for fun this week, Megan decided to buy a mango at the grocery store here in New England imported from Brazil.  It was still hard and has slowly been softening on the counter.  She paid the discounted sale price of $1 each—a bargain!  Taste-wise it was somewhat piney, not very juicy, not very sweet. Mangoes in New England are nothing special.

Contrast the islands—in the high season (late fall), there are so many mangoes that the streets are lined with sellers, full sacks cost around a dollar—and there are multiple kinds: the medium green and yellows are particularly sweet, the long orange kind have a flowery aroma and taste, the small yellow ones are no bigger than a plum and are often quite juicy, the large peach colored ones are the size of a grapefruit and have a softer flavor.  Each of these has a slightly different season, so what you find in abundance is always changing week to week.  Everything is ripe, everything is sweet.  Nothing is picked early or shipped far.  Fresh mango juice is amazing, so is mango chutney and jam.  Mango crisp and mango pie are not an island delicacy, but let me tell you, we’ve done it and it’s delicious!  

Imported mango vs fresh apples

In New England we have apples.  On the islands we have mangoes.  Both are tied to a time and a place.  The old saying goes, “For some things, you just have to be there.”  So, we’re glad we’re here in New England for the apples and look forward to being on the islands in time for the mangoes!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our colleagues managed to get tested for COVID and leave the islands on the last possible flight—both small miracles.  We are so thankful they were able to get through all the red tape.  They are much relieved to have made it to Kenya, especially the couple who are 8 months pregnant with their first child.  We have most of our clearance to head back now—we are still waiting on a medical test.  We had more opportunities to visit, encourage, and share about the islands this past week with small groups here in the US. They went really well.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for final medical clearance this week, that we would all be healthy!  These last weeks are always full of visiting, sharing, preparing, shopping and packing—we can’t do it all, but we try to do a lot.  Pray that we would continue to make wise decisions in these next few weeks about how we spend our time and resources.  We have been in contact with some different people in the pipeline with our organization who might be interested in the islands— pray for the process of deciding where people best fit, that the right people would make it to the islands to join the work there.