May Is Mango Month: The end of mangoes?

Each month this year, I plan to give myself some sort of challenge, to try to improve how I'm doing in that particular area.  In January, I did the Clean Out the Cupboards Challenge to use up the excess food in my pantry and spend as little as possible at the stores.  Last month, I did the Drugstore Bootstrap Challenge to build up my Extra Care Bucks from CVS and my Register Rewards from Walgreens.  In March and April, I challenged myself to Give Back...One Coupon at a Time.

May (and now June) is Mango Month here at Frugal Follies!  You see, I have two large mango trees in my backyard.  Too many years, I've wasted this great resource by just using a few and letting the rest fall on the ground.

Well, the Mango Months have pretty much come to an end.  Yesterday I cut down a few mangoes that simply had not ripened on the tree, and that was it.  No more.

In the last week, many ripe ones fell off the tree due to heavy rain, and they were attacked by bugs before I was able to get to them.  So those were lost.  And I let a few ripe ones in the house get too ripe, so in the trash they went as well.

But the good news is that I was able to save quite a bit of the harvest this year!  The list of what I was able to save and make is:

• 14 half-pints of mango jam
• 15 pints of mango jam
• 9 half-pints of mango chile sauce
• 4 pints of mango chile sauce
• 11 half-pints mango butter

So we'll be enjoying mangoes for some time to come!

I'll be skipping my frugal challenges in July - summer is challenging enough.  But stay tuned as I'll have lots of great monthly challenges in the coming months.  If you have an idea for a frugal challenge for me and the Frugal Follies readers, leave a comment below!