How To Eat Indian Mangoes The Way I Learned in Osama Bin Laden's Third Wife's House in Kabul: NSFW

News peg: Osama bin Laden gunned down in Pakistan.

How To Run Your Life* tie in:

I grew up eating mangoes right off the tree in Florida (Palm Beach County, to be exact. Home of the Hanging Chad). Mango whip, mango fool, raw mango, mango fruit salad... you name it, we ate it. My grandfather had an enormous mango tree and he would pick the fruit, cut it into cubes and surrepticiously stick it in our freezer while my mother and father were at work. It was a surfeit of mangoes and one had to be furtive if one meant to get rid of it all.

You eat a Florida mango by cutting through the skin down either sid of the flat pit, then scoring the flesh and turning the skin inside out. Golden cubes of mango present themselves for easy, if messy, eating.

So I thought I knew mangoes.

Fast forward to 2002. I was in Kabul, staying in Peter Juvenal's guest house near the Interior Ministry. It had previously been the home of Osama Bin Laden's third wife -- until 9/11 and the U.S. invasion, that is. It had a nice apricot tree in the courtyard and was the most comfortable, clean place for foreigners to stay.

I was sitting with a bunch of Brits when the house staff served us these mangoes (unlike any I had seen before). They taught me the proper way to do it. It's a little naughty, as you will see.

These mangoes - I think of them as Indian or Pakistani or Afghan mangoes, but I believe the variety is called Ataulfo (and Whole Foods in DC has a special on them: 10 for $10!) -- are sweet and almost completely fiber-free. So here's what you do.

1. Cut a horizontal line around the mango all the way to the pit, like you might do with an avocado.

2. Gripping one half with each hand, twist the two sides apart.

3. What emerges is phallic. It gets worse.

4. Suck and scrape all the delicious golden flesh off the exposed pit.

5. Then clamp down on the pit with your molars, and twist the remaining half of the mango off the pit.

6. Repeat step 4.

7. Now you should have 2 gorgeous mango cups, ready for a spoon. If you are serving these to guests, do this bit in the kitchen with the doors closed, over the sink. It's messy but delicious. And fairly provocative. (If you want, you can dribble a little honey and lime in each half, or dust their cavity with cayenne pepper. But they are fine as is.)

How To Cut A Lot of Little Rolly Tomatoes All At Once

I learned this trick from my Cooking Channel boyfriend Chuck's Day Off.

That's my boyfriend, Chuck's Day Off.

So this is what you do.

Get two dinner plates with lips on the bottom (the ceramic kind, not the flesh kind. I don't think you can get those here.) Invert one plate.

Put your little washed tomatoes (these are Organic Grape Tomatoes) inside the lip, comma ca.

Now put your other plate on top, bottom side down and press a little harder than you think you should. With a serrated knife, cut horizontally through the tomatoes, sawing until you get...


to the other side. et voila! your tomatoes are all cut up and ready to make Butter Chicken, or sauteed Provencal mussels.

How to Make Fava Beans (No chianti)

They are totally lovely, despite the grisly and seemingly permanent association with Hannibal Lecter.

yay, fava

But they sometimes seem a bit more trouble then they are worth. I only recently dived into fava world, and it might be useful to have someone tell you how to make this gorgeous, silken, bright green beans that have absolutely NOTHING to do with lima beans which I hate.

boo lima

limas taste like they are wearing wooly sweaters. Cast them aside! Succotash is terrible!

so, favas.

First you have to take them out of their pods. It's like shelling peas.

Then you throw all the beans into a pot of boiling water and boil them till they feel done -- a few minutes. The outside will be wrinkly like your pinkie when you sit too long in the bath.

Then you have to peel them AGAIN. It's such a pain in the ass but so worth it.

here's the easiest way to do it: Grap a paring knife and make a little cut in the wrinkly skin -- not too deep! just like a paper cut -- then squeeze. A slippery green bean, maybe two split halves, will slither out. Saute in a little olive oil, salt, pepper, a little garlic if your tastes run that way, and serve warm with a shaving or two of good parmesan. Eat.

How Patrick Henry Speaks to Me From Beyond The Grave: By Text Message

This is my Colonial Boyfriend, Patrick Henry. He kept his first wife in the attic. She was crazy.

I am not kidding. Many years ago I taught in a civic education program called Close Up. High school students came from all over the country to spend a week in Washington. If Congress wasn't in session we had to do something else -- so usually we went to Colonial Williamsburg, which I once told the kids is like Disney World without the rides. This is a rather a stretch, but it worked to get them on the bus.

Anyway: We were upstairs in parliament or whatever they called it, where the above painting (and many others) hang. I was guarding the stairwell so the kids couldn't sneak out, because you know they would. I once found a bunch of kids at midnight up the street from their hotel playing video games in a local bar. Brazen!

My mind was wandering a bit because I had already heard the spiel from the historical interpreter 18 times (this is not an exaggeration. I went to CW 19 times, 20 if you count with my family when I was little. It is a wonderful and annoying place, wherein if you see George Wythe -- a historical interpreter playing him, anyway -- and you try to get your kids interested in talking to him by saying "Mister Wythe! Tell us about young Thomas Jefferson!" because he was TJ's teacher and mentor and the kids at least know who TJ is, George Wythe will say "I know not of Thomas Jefferson" and you want to kill him, because he's pretending like it's 1750 or something, and Tom hasn't arrived at William and Mary yet. )

(George Wythe would later go on to be killed by his nephew I believe -- poisoned -- and the nephew got off scot-free because the only witness was Lydia Broadnax, a female slave, and they wouldn't let her testify against a white man. Serves all those bastards right.)

So back to the upper house: the docent is talking about the paintings, my mind is wandering, and someone whispers in my right ear "Listen to this" just as the docent turned to the above Patrick Henry portrait. I turned around to see who had snuck up behind me and there was no one there -- no on the landing, not down the stairs, not up the stairs. Clearly Patrick Henry, my Colonial boyfriend, who didn't want me missing the talk about him. I like the little glasses he wears.

Fast forward to Wednesday. The Boyfriend and I go back to CW to talk to a class at William & Mary about writing. We were in the Wren building, which dates back to I think the early 1700s. Oldest building on campus, where all of our Virginia forefathers attended class.

Class is just about to begin so I reach into my purse to silence my phone. The screen is on to text message. I had not locked my phone so it is being purse-dialed. And what was the word on the screen?

"Oppressors."

It was either Patrick Henry, who has learned how to text and remains concerned about our British overlords, or 1000 Monkeys typing Hamlet who accidentally hacked into my phone. In any case, I am like Jennifer Love Hewitt but without the terrible Victorian nightgowns or overly dramatic eye makeup.

How to Make an Emergency Blueberry Tart

I normally hate cooked blueberries -- ie blueberry pie, blueberry sauce for waffles. I'll put up with a blueberry muffin or pancake if the blueberries are fresh -- but usually I find cooked blueberries tasteless, insipid, and overly involved with corn starch.

However, I am marvelous, and I needed an Emergency Blueberry Tart for a photo shoot (still no word from my director of photography if these photos do the trick) so I threw one together with the full intention of not eating them.

But boy howdy they are good.

Here's how I did it: 2 smallish bags of organic blueberries. frozen, from Trader Joe's went into a saucepan with about 1/4 c sugar -- I added a little more, maybe another 1/.4, later in the cooking. I think much depends on your personal blueberries.

I squeezed a half a lime in, put in a tiny dash of vanilla and a whisper of cardamom (have I told you how to make Norwegian waffles with cardamom yet?), and about 3 tablespoons of corn starch I slurried with a bit of water. Cooked, tasted, cooked. Cooled.

Then I made Ina's tart crust -- 2 c flour, 1/2 lb butter (I did my mom's trick, used half shortening, and added it to the food processor at different stages, so it didn't all pulse down into corn meal.) 1/4 c sugar, 1.2 t salt, a wee bit of water. I always put in too much water. Put all that in the food processor (half the fat at the beginning, and then the other half just before you add the water. You want some pea-sized chunks of fat in the crust when you roll it out. Makes it flaky.)

Then i turned it over onto a board, mushed it together quickly, divided it in two and made discs, then wrapped and refrigerated.

When the blueberries and the dough were cool, I rolled out the dough in a free form circle with lots of flour on the board to prevent sticking (I had added too much water), put the dough circle on a parchment covered baking sheet -- you must have parchment in your kitchen at all times - and then spooned on the now somewhat thick blueberry filling in the center. I folded up the sides, brushed the crust with a beaten egg for color, then sprinkled it with sanding sugar (another must in the kitchen). Into the oven at about 375 (I was totally making this up) until the filling bubbled and the crust was golden brown. Ta da! I still wont eat blueberry pie... if I am not the one who made it. Whipped cream and a shaving of lemon zest over the top, done. Took less than 20 minutes to mix up all components and about 30 mins in the oven. Make it!

If You Keep Peas in the Freezer, You'll Never Go Hungry

Srsly.

Here's what to make for dinner tonight. It takes 10 minutes. Take that, Rachel Ray.

(honestly. I always wear that to make roast turkey,and then I change into my St Pauli Girl outfit to make pie.)

Cook up a bunch of orzo pasta -- it looks like rice. This takes about 8 minutes. In the last few minutes of cooking, throw in a bag of frozen peas -- the little ones.

Toss the whole mess into a colander and drain it. Immediately put it back in the hot pot that you cooked it in and grate a bunch of fresh Parmesan cheese over it. Salt and pepper and you're in business.

To glam it up you can (do any of the following, alone or in combination)

• drizzle a bit of extra virgin olive oil over it.


• grate lemon zest over it


• mix it with cooked, crumbled bacon that was cooked with a sliced garlic clove


• add chopped fresh herbs (dill works, as does basil, flat leaf parsley, mint... even a few thyme leaves)


• add cooked asparagus (fresh cooked please, in season. not canned.)


• swirl the peas and pasta in a few tablespoons heavy cream, over medium heat, until the cream thickens slightly. Then add more cheese.

In case you missed 'em : Cherry Blossoms

I'm not sure how ANYONE could say they missed them because traffic was tied up around the monument for WEEKS and it was cheek-to-jowl down along the tidal basin. I think everyone was THERE. The Boyfriend took these photos -- he's good.

This one is the tree in front of my house...

And the view from inside my attic bedroom. Could you die?

This one is from last year ... taken with a blackberry. I like how abstract it is and the colors remind me of Maxfield Parrish.