Jun 30, 2016 3 min read

How does a person get to age 50-something without having eaten an avocado?

I’ve been missing out – all those years without guacamole.

I grew up in what was probably a fairly typical 1970s family. The only avocado in our house was the color of the appliances. We were more from the green bean-iceberg lettuce-apple wing of the produce party, which is to say we didn’t have the most exotic palates. I still remember the pot of split pea soup that ended up in the sink because we all whined about it so much. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s that I discovered that asparagus is not that slimy stuff that comes from a can. Years later that first bite of steamed asparagus was a revelation.

Maybe avocados – and asparagus – weren’t readily available at the grocery store back then. More likely, they were there but nobody knew what to do with them. Now, after all those years, avocados are on my shopping list every week.

This started with the opening of a Mexican restaurant nearby. Every time, we stuffed our faces with their warm, salty chips heaped with the guacamole. It’s not much of a leap from that green and red bowl of heaven to that day I was at the supermarket produce aisle, squeezing the avocados to find the ripe ones.

Here’s the thing, though. Avocados don’t taste like much. Like tofu and white rice, avocado needs to jump into the bowl with other things in order to amount to anything. I think the pleasure is in the texture – like butter that’s been left in an air-conditioned kitchen: not too hard and not too soft.

For me, half the pleasure of an avocado has nothing to do with eating it. An avocado is fun to get into.

To do it correctly, you do this: Drag a sharp knife around the diameter of the avocado, starting at the tip and cutting all the way around. Twist the fruit open. Now, you see the seed that’s like a little bocce ball.

Smack the knife blade into the pit, twist and pull out the seed. Now, all you have to do is spoon out the flesh in two clean scoops, once for each half.

For guacamole, I add chopped tomatoes, some chopped onion, lime juice and salt. Smash it all up, and there you go. I’ve never had a job in food service, but if I did, I would want to be the Avocado Czar. I could do that knife-scoop thing all day.

As it is, I do it a lot. My daughter asks for it every day, which is becoming a bit of a problem because avocados are expensive. And I always forget the limes.

But the avocados are supposed to be the kind of fat that is very healthy. I chant that in my head when I’m digging into the bowl with a big, sharp tortilla chip. If I serve this before dinner, the main course just sits there. It’s becoming an expensive and possibly fattening habit around here.

But oh, the creamy, lumpy green goodness of it. My daughter just walked in and, not knowing I was writing about it, asked if I would make her some guacamole for lunch.

My knife is sharpened and ready.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.