where do you look for sunshine?

When rain in Seattle or Portland makes national news, you know things are about as bad as they get here. Standing water on freeways, drains unable to keep pace with the deluge,  stretches of highway closed, even a few small towns along rivers evacuated. We get grey days, and mostly gentle (and occasionally incessant) rain here, but not monsoons that turn umbrellas inside out and flood boots with the rain that falls fast down our jackets.  I was hydroplaning down the freeway about 10 miles an hour below speed limit, heading toward a long (and long-overdue) coffee date with a dear friend. Carolyn had been out of town for more than a month and I’d missed her. I was thinking of her sunny self as I tried to see through the waterfall that was my windshield. I was thinking too about where it is we go looking for sunshine when our eyes and skin are hungry for it.

Carolyn and I sat drinking our large steamy cups of chai, catching up with the parts of each other’s lives we’d missed. And then, from beneath the table she brought out a canvas banana with a zipper along one side. “Bananagrams,” she said. “You’re going to love it!” She spilled the tiles onto the table, and we turned them over, letters face-down,  as she explained how the game is played. Carolyn was right of course, my friend knows me. From here on out, along with my camera, Bananagrams go where I go.

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Not long ago I’d visited a fellow-blogger  – Violets and Cardamom – and was struck by her pretty mango lassi.  It was lovely.

Today, I winged my own with several changes. Knowing the deliciousness of the pairing of mango, coconut, ginger, lime, cardamom and banana, it was a simple matter to drop them into a blender, whir them up, pour them out, and stick a straw into a glass of gleaming sunshine.

Mango Banana Coconut Smoothie with Ginger & Cardamom

1 cup frozen mango (or 1 very ripe mango)

1 ripe banana

1 cup mango nectar

½ can coconut milk

½ to 1 whole lime, peeled

1 knob fresh ginger, about 1 x ½-inch, cut in several pieces

scant ½ teaspoon ground cardamom

(1 handful of ice-cubes if using fresh mango)

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Drop ingredients into blender, whir, pour. Sprinkle if you like with a touch of cardamom.

Serves 2

This smoothie called for a little muffin, filled with warming bits of candied ginger and apricots, and a smear of sweet butter, melting. Today, in the very midst of a monsoon, I found sun shining in my friend’s face, in a steamy cup of chai, in a mango ginger coconut cardamom smoothie and in a warm and homey muffin.

I found it too in a banana bag of tiles that spell out whatever I may ask them to.

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for a printer-friendly version of the recipe, click here.

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I apologize! Briefly the print link above wasn’t taking you to the right spot. It is now.