Saturday, January 26, 2013

Avo-ca-don't mind if i do: a love story.


If you’re like most folk —who hang on every single word I post on Facebook— then you know that I like avocados. Like, more than a friend. Recently this “like” has risen to near-obsessive levels.

What you may NOT know is that I’ve been trying to avoid processed food and refined sugars. Due, in part, to creeping fatness and also to a viewing of a loosely constructed, but very interesting documentary called “Forks over Knives” (www.forksoverknives.com) which extolls the virtues of a plant-based, whole foods kind of lifestyle.

Practically this change has translated into fewer crackers, chips, cookies, granola bars (donuts *GASP*) and such on a daily basis and far more fresh, raw fruits and vegetables. So far it’s been great. I wouldn’t call it a diet, but more of a minor lifestyle adjustment for the better. I’ve dropped a few pounds, and have been feeling very well indeed. Plus I get extra fancy-pants-food-snob credits, which allow me to feel vastly superior to the general public.

So ambling through the produce section one day, feeling very jaunty and good about myself, I picked up a few attractive looking avocados, which were on special.  In a sun-bathed 70's style flashback I recalled my days in San Diego (well, mostly Escondido), picking avocados by the shopping bag full from the trees of a few of my lawn care customers, largely sweet old ladies who lived alone on giant ranchos in the outlying areas of the North County, and enjoying the avocados on the tailgate of my service truck on my lunch break, overlooking some scenic canyon.  I intended to eat these raw, and re-introduce myself to the fruit. 

What I didn’t expect was to fall completely in love with them.

Flash forward. I cut into the first ripe avocado and sprinkled it lightly with salt and pepper. It tasted like black magic and velvet sunshine. I was into it. I began packing ‘cados in my lunch every day, counting the minutes until I would carefully slice one open and spoon its contents into my mouth.  A brood of green avocados have since been perpetually ripening on the kitchen windowsill. Each devoured at their peak of smooth, green loveliness.

Though certainly whole, raw and fresh, I had heard for years that the jewel of the San Diego hills was very fattening due to it’s high fat and calorie content. So I looked it up.

True, avocados are high in calories and fat, but that is due to the presence of many GOOD fats, of the omega-3 and omega-6 variety. These fats are actually essential to brain function, skin and hair growth, healthy metabolism, joint health, resistance of inflammation and a healthy reproductive system. So eating lots of delicious avocados will keep me smart, help my arthritis, keep my massive crop of jet black body hair strong and glossy AND keep the wedding tackle in good order? Papa calls that a win-win-win-win. Win.

I struggled to include a recipe in this post, and confess that since this obsession started, I have not cooked a single avocado dish. That’s because most of the fruit goes directly down the hatch.  However, I do have a recipe to share, thanks to my friend Melissa, who whipped up her own special version of the following recipe as a cold dish over the summer, of a sultry evening, after a hot day of shed building. It was so good that I have since replicated it several times— with varying results— depending on what I had laying around, and how hard I felt like working.

So give it a try, if you can control yourself long enough to spare a few of these luscious brain fatteners long enough to cook with them.












Photo credit: Somebody else. 


Papa’s Avocado Pasta

Note: The photo of this dish is completely lifted from the internet, as I said, I haven’t made it recently. The site from which  I lifted it also admits to “adapting” it from another blog, so fuck it. Mine looks similar to this without all the cheese and uppity foodie photography.
  

Get this:

 Pasta. Whatever kind. The good stuff, don’t get cheap on me.

2 to 27 ripe avocados

2 tbsp good olive oil (also rich in good, sexy fats)

About a cup of fresh, diced tomato- use a variety with lots of flavor, like roma, plum or grape

Handful of fresh basil, chopped

Handul of fresh cilantro, also chopped

A squirt of lemon or lime juice

Pinch of sea salt, dash of black pepper, to taste


Do this:

Cook the pasta to al-dente, drain, and rinse under cool water

Peel and cut the avocados into chunks, throw ‘em into a good-size mixing bowl. Drizzle on the oil. Mash with a fork until smoothish but still kinda lumpy.

Add tomato, herbs, lime juice and salt & pepper. Mix gently.

Toss in cooked and cooled pasta. Eat immediately (like I’d have to tell you) preferably with a california white, or a nice light-bodied ale. Repeat. 













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