You call these mangoes!?!

How could you betray me like this, Chinatown? I thought I could trust you. Last Saturday, I bought a couple of mangoes during my travels in your realm. They seemed ripe. They were soft around the stem. They leaked sugary liquid. They were almost too soft. But when I cut into them tonight, I felt an unexpected resistance to my blade and heard a grinding sound similar to the cutting of stale bread. Fibrous, rock-hard mangoes! At first I told myself "Oh, these must be juice mangoes; perhaps they'll be very sweet." But I was fooling myself. Fibrous and tart mangoes! Why, Chinatown, why?

Ok, I feel a bit better now. I've forgiven Chinatown because he provided me with excellent spices, rice and hot peppers (didn't think the personification of Chinatown would be male, eh?), but I've learned my lesson. A co-worker just told me that she finds decent mangoes in Indian stores, so that will be my next stop. But, alas, my famous mango salsa was a bit of a flop last night. I couldn't find jalapeños, so I used piments antillais (habañeros) without the seeds or membranes, but it was still a bit too spicy. The mangoes were too hard and tart, so they didn't dissolve in the lime juice and salt into a thick chutney-like paste. I'll let them sit overnight, but if they don't come around, I think I might just boil the whole thing down to soften things up.

On the up side, I steamed some fingerling potatoes with bay leaves and thyme in preparation for some papas a la huancaína that I'm going to make tomorrow night. I steamed them in a pressure cooker for just a few minutes and the results were perfect. Cooked but not mushy, with the skins still intact. I split one of the smaller ones to check doneness, and I put a bit of mayonnaise on it to taste. I suddenly had a brainstorm: warm potato salad with fennel instead of dill, steamed fingerling potatoes instead of boiled, and a bit of lime juice. Yum! I'll have to actually make that happen sometime soon.

Now, what about my day? I had a rather intense day at work (not necessarily in a bad way, just busy) after which I headed right home (with a stop for groceries). Aside from making potatoes, mango salsa and planning tomorrow's dinner, I mostly hooked into the web and tried to catch up. I needed to fill in previous days' worth of blogging, I needed to work on my paper (still going...) and I was anxious to see the election results. As much as I'm often allergic to his tone of voice, John Aravosis's blog, Americablog provided a useful blow-by-blow of the election day. From the sounds of things, there will be "voting irregularity" complaints to rival the 2000 elections—mostly thanks to the electronic voting machine reforms instituted by a large part of the country.