Having a paper to write does wonderful things for my motivation to cook. That is, my desire to procrastinate. My desk has been cleaned, my papers are organized, my inbox is clear. However, I have made none of mentor’s corrections. Oops! Let me just say that when I have some beautiful, ripe avocados in front of me, writing about the peritrophic membrane of mosquitos (and trying to write with some flow) takes a back seat. I guess that’s why I’ll never be a PhD. And that is JUST fine.
Then Michaela wanted to go to the store and the avocados were just perfectly ripe right there, and on SALE. So what else would you do with a lovely avocado but make some guacamole! Guacamole is so easy to make and everyone loves it. Honestly, all you need is a sharp knife, a mixing bowl, and a fork. And, of course, some wonderful fresh vegetables. What beats any sort of store bought guacamole is the freshness you get in home-made.
I also finally dug out my camera, because everyone had been through my pictures on iPhoto and noticed the category “Blog Photos”. They all thought it was tres cool, so when I asked them to slide over a bit so I could borrow the light, everyone happily obliged. Michaela was quite enthusiastic about me asking her to hold a chip.
In the end, I had a TON of guacamole. Luckily it’s Fridays when the younger crowd from the lab likes to get together at the dock. They were down there with Coronas when I provided them with guac and chips, so a significant portion disappeared. Interestingly, people have a lot of opinions about guacamole. Today I got things from: “wow, you put lots of THINGS in there. I usually just put some spices”, to “ach onion!”, to “what’s that green stuff? cildanro? gah, ew”.
Well, I like my guacamole CHUNKY and full of FLAVOR. Whatever they said didn’t seem to matter much after they tried it, because they all ate significant amounts. As far as constructing a guacamole goes, I loosely followed the recipe I found, because I think as long as you’ve got some avocados, everything else is secondary. I really just used what I had plus a couple other things. I don’t really like spicy, nor do I like green bell peppers, so I picked up an orange bell pepper (in large part because it was such an unmarred orange that I couldn’t leave be). Also, I prefer white onion to red onion, and I’ve never been big on cilantro. I love how it smells, but I can’t handle it when it overwhelms dishes, so I also cut down on that.
Guacamole
Recipe modified from http://www.cookthink.com/recipe/4159/Guacamole.
1/4 orange bell pepper, diced
1 1/2 vine-ripened tomatoes, cored, seeded, diced
1/2 white onion, diced
<1 bunch chopped fresh cilantro
2 limes, juiced
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
4 Hass avocados
Mix all ingredients except avocado in a large bowl. Cut your avocado in half, discard the seed, and scoop out the flesh, adding it to the bowl. For an excellent tutorial in avocado dismantling, click here. Take a fork to the ingredients and have a ball, mashing it up until it reaches your desired level of smoothness.
