Pineapple Mango Sorbet with Chili, Lime, and Salt

Digging through the freezer for a long lost package of onion bagels to go with my smoked salmon, I stumbled upon the ice cream bowl for the KitchenAid and realized we had yet to make ice cream this summer. Utter blasphemy.

With half a carton of Costco mangoes ripening on the counter and a fresh pineapple looking for a home, the recipe pretty much wrote itself.

It wasn't all tropical fruit and smiles, though. Blood was shed.

Relax. She's not doing what you think she's doing. Just an unfortunate incident with a vegetable peeler.

The kiddos loved theirs just like this. Icy cold, smooth, crisp, and pure. But I couldn't stop thinking about a summer long ago spent walking the waterfront in Veracruz crunching jicama and pineapple in copas de frutas coated with chili, lime, and a sprinkle of salt. Can you see where this is headed?

Vacation in a Cup Pineapple Mango Sorbet

1/2 of a fresh pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into pieces
3 mangoes, peeled and pitted (watch those little fingers with that slippery peeler)
1 cup sugar
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp. dark rum (optional)
chili powder (optional)
sea salt (optional)
lime wedges (optional)

1. Puree pineapple and mango in a blender until smooth. Add sugar, lime juice, and rum and process until well combined. The kids gave me a hard time about the rum, but 1 tsp. distributed throughout an entire batch of sorbet is not going to kill them and it lends a nice subtle counterpoint to all that fruity sweetness. Chill mixture in the fridge for an hour or so.

2. Pour cold mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the instructions (or pour into any freezable container if you don't have an ice cream maker and chill several hours until firm). Store in an airtight container in the freezer.

3. Top with a squeeze of lime and dust with salt and chili powder before serving. Voila! Your Mexican tropical beach vacation in a cup.

Props for Grampy

Budesonide, or Pulmicort, if you prefer, is an asthma medication.  It comes in individual packets or respules dissolved in a couple of milliters of liquid that are meant to be used in a nebulizer specifically for inhalation to treat, well, asthma, of course.  For eosinophilic esophagitis, the protocol is a bit different.  You have to drink the stuff.  To make it more palatable and stick-to-your-esophagus thick, GI specialists the world over have recommended mixing it with a few packets of Splenda to create a sickly sweet sludge-like consistency which is supposed to adhere to the esophagus walls, thus maximizing the effectiveness of the steroid.  Anyone out there ever eat a whole packet of Splenda?  How about five at a time? 

A few months ago when we were first looking at a budesonide trial for Roo, we were dreading it.  See, we were the teeniest bit skeptical that we could get this kid, who at age three, has yet to ingest a dose of Children's Tylenol successfully due to a hyper-sensitive gag reflex, to swallow five packets of Splenda mixed with medicine.  Not once, but twice a day for eight weeks. 

As I was hemming and hawing about how to make this happen, and whining just a bit perhaps about the unfairness of it all over the phone to my parents, my dad, Grampy to Roo, Bean, and Looly, devised his own brilliant solution.  Sorbet.  Roo can't get enough.  It's thick, tangy, sweet but not too sweet, icy enough to dull the flavor, has few ingredients, and let's face it, way more fun to eat than Splenda.  After one horrifically unsuccessful attempt with the Splenda, I nervously approached our GI team with Grampy's idea and to my surprise they agreed to let us try it.  Roo literally ate it up.  For what ended up being more than ten weeks due to scheduling difficulties with the scope. 

And get this, as it turns out, our GI team is now passing along Grampy's new recommendation to other families starting on budesonide for EoE.  Turns out sorbet is the new Splenda.  And Grampy is the Man!