I bet they won't be expecting that

Another hoppin' Saturday night! Mara and I organized the recipe cards that came with the recipe boxes I bought at work the other day. I know, pretty wild, but we were able to keep things under control and nothing caught fire or anything. Here's one of my favorite recipes:

MANGO CHUTNEY

100 half ripe mangoes
2 large onions
2 cloves garlic
3 lbs raisins
3 lbs currants
1 cup preserved ginger
5 qts white vinegar
1/2 cup chili pepper
17 lbs brown sugar
3 tsp each: nutmeg, ginger, cloves, allspice

Bolded to emphasize madness. Forty pounds of mangoes, six pounds of raisins and currants, seventeen pounds of brown freaking sugar. Holy. Crap. Not even counting the other ingredients, that's sixty three pounds of chutney.

Who would ever need sixty three pounds of chutney at one time. Seriously. And this woman had seventeen different recipes for chutney, ten for mango and seven for pineapple. JUST CHUTNEY. WHAT IS WITH THE CHUTNEY. Everything else was fairly standard fare for having been collected apparently across the span of the '60s through the '90s. It was kind of like reading a diary (a chutney diary) of sorts; we determined that she for sure lived in Hawaii, California, Denver, and presumably ended her days in Minneapolis. My guess is she was an army wife (an army fed by chutney). She got a lot of recipes from Leona, several from Ellinore, a few from Doris. And I think we can safely assume that woman loved her some chutney.

After the recipe cards party, we went grocery shopping, and I bought vegemite on impulse. It's one of those things I've always kind of wanted to try but didn't want to spend money on because I was pretty sure I would not be happy. I was wrong. Apparently I love vegemite. Who knew?