Attack of the orange goo

A few comments boxes ago, Kat remarked that mangoes make a giant mess when you slice them. "Good thing it's worth it, eh?" she said.

Indeed. So imagine the state of my kitchen yesterday evening after I chopped nine cups of mango for a homemade facsimile of Major Grey's Chutney. You see, we really like MGC. A lot. And it costs $4-something per 9 oz. at the local grocery. (If ketchup cost that much, the fast-food economy would grind to a halt!)

So the price of the commercial chutney gives us pause, because we're frugal and like to DIY when we can. My thought was, okay, mangoes are on sale for 78 cents each, so let's give it a try.

I think the homemade MGC is good. In fact, I think it's really good, if the orange goo that was all over me and everything I touched is any indication. But I'm letting the jars age for a little while before I pop one of them open.

It is a known fact that, sticky mangoes or no, canning leaves your kitchen utterly trashed. So when I bought the mangoes, I also bought a three-pound bag of apples so I could put up some apple butter. It's not much more trouble to can two things than it is to can one thing.

Here's the final count:
4 pints chutney, plus one half-pint
4 half-pints apple butter

The apple butter is goooooood. We are eating it on some of that multigrain bread I mentioned a while back.

I suspect that other people's Friday nights are a lot different from mine.