How I cured my mango allergy

and other humilities

The first time I broke out in a rash from a mango I was having a spa day with an Ecuadorian boyfriend in Mexico.

“Leesin to me, I mix honey with yogur and then we put mango on top and sit ou-side and then go swim in the Car-ee-bay…” he had lots of fun and unproven health remedies and I loved him and so I’d try them. His abuelo soaking his feet in olive oil, the spitting out the window when a snake came in the house, the outrageous amounts of epsom salt he’d drink in a glass of water to spend the day on the toilet for the “purgante” and more.

My face from the mango yogurt was a welty affair. Maybe it was the sun and the yogurt and saltwater. I didn’t think I had allergies. Then over the years I would get a mouth rash whenever I had a mango lassie at an Indian restaurant or ate one plain and had a scratchy mouth and someone said yea, they’re part of the poison ivy family. Odd. But true.

I have 4 small trees in the rented scrap yard here in Mexico where I put Lola’s Dog Rescue. Mostly sand and these aging fruit trees. Mango, Lime, Ciruela (tiny yellow Japanese plums) and a “limon” tree that makes sort of green oranges that smell like coconuts. I’ll eat the plums until I burst like Pooh Bear with the honeypot at Rabbit’s House and the mangoes are prolific, smell amazing and drop sunset gold red bounty all summer long. The dogs eat most of them and I give bags to the trash men and kids who deliver the occasional rotisserie chicken. There are pits everywhere and Suzy the labrador gets fruit drunk eating them alone in the dark each night.

I love fresh fruit (which I cannot get here) and I am broke. Not generational broke, but a series of middle aged real estate market blunders, a car accident, 2020 happened, freelancer, running a unfunded dog rescue in the desert broke.

And here I have all this free beautiful seasonal fruit.

I decide it’s time to suck it up and have a hair of the dog like I did with ragweed one year—-if you take Claritin or whatever their allergy pill du jour is you’ll be a slave to their pusher methods every season. I started making golden floral arrangements to the ceiling with ragweed and just sneezing through it. After one fall, my “hay fever” never returned. For the love of tree eating and empty wallets, I started to eat a slice a day. The peel is the thing said the Chicken kids…you won’t get a rash if you peel it better and wash your hands after.

I go without a lot of stuff since showing up here in The Middle of Nowhere. There’s no “organic” section, no grass fed meat, no raw organic dairy, no vitamin stores, no fair trade organic coffee beans, no bathtubs and not even epsom salt for the purgante or a foot soak. My juicer, my French Press, my culinary salt collection all scattered on the highway and went to the dump with my cordless Dyson (RIP) none of which I can get delivered. Even if I could justify the $800 vacuum price (and I cannot) nothing ships here. So I use a broom, I mop on a daily, I eat the cucumbers of unknown provenance from the cheapo tienda and suffer with Grade B produce and below because everyone here is poor and poor people do not spend their last peso on apples. They spend it on beer because they want to enjoy their day because tomorrow may not come.

Oh but I’m different and special and detoxing from heavy metals. I mean I used to do coffee enemas and saunas. Red light therapy. Salt soaks. Drink turpentine. I spent $400 on a Berkey for cryin’ out loud. And now I drink instant coffee (all they sell) and just go outside to sweat for a sauna hour. There is no one here I would or could explain the coffee enemas to I don’t think. Well there’s this portal vein to the liver and …it all sounds silly to even say out loud.

There is no nut butter or even peanut butter and sometimes not even butter butter. I do without, I still can’t stomach the margarine. It’s $1.25 a stick when they do bring it in. When I buy it, I find that I slice off a lot thinner pats. Partly because I don’t know when they’ll have it again and partly because of The Budget which is roughly “Spend as Little as Possible”. Dog food is price locked and only available at 2 stores. Crap kibble and $42/bag. Dogs like Andie and Pedro have perfected the street dog eye to beg from the gringo pipeline workers and at night the carne asada guy. Also fish scrap. I’ve made some good rawhide with sun dried baby shark/cazon skin. And so all the dogs take a spin at the shore to eat pelican leftovers.

To be clear, I would love a good cup of coffee with heavy cream, Euro butter, some high mineral sea salt from France and better quality beef but that’s just not where I’m at right now. Geographically or financially. I’m a little glad that I’m not broke in the South of France to be honest. That would be torture. But there’s nothing I’m craving here for sure. People eat mostly hotdogs.

And so, here we are. Alive and eating regular food and making do without microgreens and just eating cabbage and romaine. I can eat two whole mangoes a day without incident and am thinking about adding a third before the season is over. I’m out of plums and the oranges are a few months away.

Any grain free, low carb, Paleo, pescatarian, ancient grain sourdough, cold pressed ways are gone for now.

It turns out, I can’t afford to have an allergy to mangoes.

Lola’s Dog Rescue Mexico is a labor of love in a remote fishing village in the state of Sonora, Mexico. I have been stranded here since a car wreck in 2021 and I rehab and feed abandoned street dogs and get them ready for adoption into loving homes. Visit my Instagram lolasdogrescue and if you see any special doggo, let me know and we can get them to Tucson and onward to your state with a series of very dedicated and caring souls. Thanks for reading.