What Does a Vegetarian Eat for Lunch? Guacamole

I love guacamole. And when you make it at home it’s so much better than the kind you can buy premade in the store. Plus, think of all the preservatives and other things they add when it has to sit on a shelf for a week or two before you buy it and eat it. I know, I know, avocados are high in fat. I usually hear that from people who have no problem eating a rack of pork ribs, a Big Mac, and a frozen mocha latté. Avocados have good fat in them. Much better fat for you than animal fat.

It doesn’t take much time to make fresh guacamole at home. The best thing to make it in is a molcajete, which is a bowl on legs carved out of lava rock. The first one I ever had a friend brought back to me from Mexico. My second one came from a fancy cookware store at the mall. Just last week I saw them for sale at Costco. My have we come a long way. And how cutting edge was I back in the 80s when I mashed my first guacamole in lava stone?

Chop up about a tablespoon of onion and put it in the molcajete. Chop up one or two cloves of garlic and add them. Take out the seeds and membranes from one or two jalapeño peppers, then slice them into long strips, then crosswise into little cubes. Add those to the molcajete. Sprinkle on some sea salt and some ground black pepper. Take the masher that comes with the molcajete and smash the contents into a paste. Leave as much chunks as you like when you eat guacamole.

Take a ripe avocado, the flesh of which will give in slightly when you press into the skin with your finger, and cut down to the seed with a knife from the pointy tip to the bottom and then around the other side and up to the tip where you started. There will be a full circle cut down to the seed all the way around the avocado. Place one hand on each half of the cut avocado and twist until the halves come apart and the seed is stuck in the center of one half. Then take a big knife and chop it just enough into the seed so that when you rotate the knife the seed pops out stuck on the knife. Take a spoon and scoup out the greenish yellow part of the avocado leaving the rind clean of green flesh. Place in the molcajete and rough chop the avocado with a spoon. Take the masher and lightly mash leaving the avocado fairly chunky.

Squeeze the juice of one lemon through a strainer and into the avocado mix so that the seeds get stuck in the strainer. Chop up a tomato or two and add. Mix lightly with the spoon until all of the tomato chunks get covered with the avocado.

You can scoop with tortilla chips, but I like to use the leaves from a Belgian Endive. Serve it right in the molcajete.