Mango Shakes

Even when we lived in Roanoke, our dinners were often haphazard. I don’t love cooking. I really don’t love cooking if the end result doesn’t involve lots of vegetables and few starches. Randal likes starches, meat and not so many vegetables. His mom, who lived to be 96 and was a great cook, added a stick of butter just to start things off. My mom cooked Pritikin. Back in Roanoke it was tricky to make meals we both liked. And when I cooked, I found I ate too much. It seemed a waste to cook a little of something. So luckily, neither one of us is a fussy eater. Now, lots of nights I ask Randal which can he wants; chili, ravioli, beans? I do cook beans and boiled potatoes. Randal says I don’t cook the potatoes long enough. Randal says there is no such thing as overcooking potatoes. Hmm. So, though our breakfast and lunch are pretty normal, dinners are truly haphazard. We have also picked up the habit of eating a bigger lunch than we did back home. It is better that way, and since we were often out and about, just worked out that way too. Randal’s favorite meal at the Scuba Shack in Subic Bay was babyback ribs, beans, potato salad and San Mig Light. Big lunch! Of course, we walked almost 2 miles to get there and often stopped to do chores on the way back adding miles. So, as much as we ate, we seemed to break even; no calories gained, no calories lost.

How does all of this relate to mango shakes? We all got hooked on mango shakes back in China. I ordered one at dinner one night, passed it around for the entire contingent of Diesel Duck owners to try and still had lots left. After that, it was the drink of choice with dinner followed by a San Mig light. I actually was the only one who never ordered another mango shake, at least not with a meal. The mango shake craze followed us to Subic where they were available most of the year. (In China there was a mango season and a no mango season.) Still it wasn’t my thing. I ate lots of mangoes, just didn’t drink them in shakes. I mostly like to chew my calories.

Our last trip to Manila, when we visited Carol and went to Lake Taal, we shopped while in Makati. Randal wanted a blender to make shakes. He had spent several years during our biking hay day drinking protein shakes. Even in Roanoke it took a few tries to find a blender that wasn’t destroyed when it tried to crush ice. So we knew it wouldn’t be easy. Subic Bay had no ice crushing blenders. Carol sent us to Anson’s Department Store in Makati and Randal found an Osterizer. We had asked a store clerk to show us the blenders that would crush ice. He took us to the most expensive one, the only one that would crush ice. 2600 pesos and worth every peso when we are drinking mango shakes! Actually that only translates to $62 and worth every penny since it does crush ice. Or rather it has since we bought it in April.

So the point of this story is that almost every evening we have a mango or mango/banana shake for dinner. Sometimes we eat something light later, but sometimes not. We have the shakes any time between 4:30 pm and 6. Randal adds milk and sweetened condensed milk, vanilla sometimes and even peanut butter sometimes. All of the results are wonderful. Since we often start our day at 5 am, we are ready for dinner and sleep earlier than members of the working world. Being closer to the equator we have almost 12 hours of light and 12 of dark. It gets light by 6am and starts to get dark by 6 pm. For us, dark often means time to go to bed. Light certainly means it’s time to get up.

We have a system for our mango shakes that shares the work. I buy the mangoes and bananas and peel the mangoes when it’s time for shakes. Randal takes the peeled mangoes and does the rest. He even refills the ice tray (or no shake the next day). We keep glasses in the little freezer just for the shakes. Afterwards, I clean up.

The other evening Nancy and Geoff Cannell came to visit us and Randal made mango/banana shakes. Geoff added some rum to his. He said that it was good, but I haven’t tried one that way yet so I don’t know. Sounds good. We have some old, cheap banana rum that literally none of the other Diesel Duck folks wanted. I thought it might be interesting in banana bread. Anyway, maybe I’ll try that one time. It tasted good in Crystal Light!

See the photos.

Ruth Johnson
DoraMac