digdirt, it came from a friends Mom, passed down through the generations. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your concern! I or no one I know has ever gotten sick from it. I have ate some that was 2 or 3 years old. And I am a person that gets the umm, you know, every time I eat out! IMHO, I don't think the "the current guidelines" should apply to everything. You can have tried and true, tasty canned stuff or overcooked bland or overwhelmed with vinegar stuff. "The current guidelines" are about food safety, yes I know we should follow them to be safe. If you follow "the current guidelines" on a hamburger, for example, what do you get? A dried up piece of meat that the dog won't eat! I will post it there and they will probably say NOOOOOOOOO! But I'll continue to eat it!

Mike mangos do very well in containers in the GH. Make sure you get a grafted dwarf variety. They are almost as easy as papayas. Some varieties do better in pots then others. I still think the flavor of container grown fruit up north is inferior to inground and container trees grown trees from down South but it's fun to be able to pick fruit off your own tree. I got rid of most of my fruit trees a while back so that I could devote more GH space to flowering plants. Years ago there were few varieties available in the grocery store and they weren't that ripe or tasty but now I can get a wide variety of ripe mangos at the Asian markets. Have you taken a look at the Tropical Fruit Forum? You can get a lot of good info there.

Sorry for torturing you Gary.....actually, by this time in the season I start to have mango-itis. That's inflamation caused by eating too many mangoes. Not really, but there does come a point when I start to get "mangoed out." JF: Lancetilla was quite good. It ranked in the middle of the pack for the mangoes we were tasting that particular day. You have to remember, the mango trees I purchased over the years have all been rated "excellent" for eating/flavor quality or they have been raved about by someone I thought had sufficient mango knowledge/experience for me to rely on their judgment and go get that particular variety. If I were ranking the tasting table we had that day as pictured, the Dot was a good solid 9.5 (that is about as good as a rating as I give as I think there always has to be some hope left in one's mind that there still could be a mango somewhere that is even better). I would rate the Valencia Pride, Ivory and Lancetilla hovering in the 8.5-9.0 area. The Kent and Golden Lippens were solid 8.5's and the unknown mango and Gold Nuggett brought up the rear as hovering between 8.0 and 8.5. I use the hovering rating method as different parts of a particular mango can actually be better/worse than other parts. For reference, I rank Ataulofo (Champagne) mangoes that you can readily buy in the store as varying between 4.0 to around 6.0 on their best day. Tony (SWRancher) brought up a point in another thread about the Ivory mango possibly being the same as Tog Bi Con (which I also have). I bought it at the Broward RFVC sale about 1 1/2 years ago. It was one of the very few mango trees (of any size) that did not bloom this year. By not blooming, it really had a very nice growth spurt and I'll see next year what the fruit looks like on it. I bought the tree because Murray Corman (Garden of Delights) said that it was an excellent, very sweet mango....very late and looked kind of like a banana. Here's the leaves on the two for comparison. Tog Bi Con: From July 22, 2011 Ivory: From July 22, 2011 Not sure one can draw any definite conclusions....but I certainly cannot exclude the possiblity that they are the same. Harry

I'm a big fan of my Chemex pour-over. There are for sure some downsides. Most notably, it's not a push a button and leave sort of deal. Due to this, though, you control the water temperature, and pour, because it's your own hand doing it. It also uses proprietary filters that aren't the easiest to get. I live in downtown Boston and have found a few places within walking distance that carry them. But it's not a matter of going to your local supermarket and grabbing them off the shelf. Coffee geeks also will note often that said proprietary filters impart a "papery" taste into the coffee. I do a rinse with about a cup of hot water and then dump it down the drain before I add my grounds and that takes care of any sort of taste. The final plus? I think it looks beautiful sitting on my counter :)