This week, a flawless organic California avocado is $2.89 at our local grocery. They are out of season now, so prices will get worse before they get better. I buy an avocado every week, regardless of the cost; they are essential to my happiness. Last year, when Kroger put them
on sale for $1.00 each, I raced over to get some, visions of guacamole dancing in my head:
AVOCADO
a parody of Edgar Allan Poe’s Eldorado
I browse a while
In the produce aisles
Wheeling up and down rows
Hot on the trail
Of a massive sale
On my favorite, avocados
Where fleshy fruits
In dark green suits
Should have lain in neat rows
To my chagrin
Is an empty bin:
SOLD OUT of avocados
A stockboy’s near
So I bend his ear
Will there be more tomorrow?
He hurries back,
His handcart stacked
With crates of avocados
Over the mountain,
Over the moon,
I feel like I’ve won the Lotto!
At a buck apiece,
I’ll feast all week
On my stash of avocados
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JUST JOAN 42 
In SoCal, we get them year round — if not locally in season, they are imported from Mexico.
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Lucky you! Ours come from Cali or Mexico. I assume avocados have a season, even in SoCal, because they’re a dollar each here when they’re plentiful and over $3 when they’re not. I am committed to eating local, but cannot give up avocados, mangoes, and coffee. 🙂
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They don’t get quite that expensive here, but imported avocados are more pricey than local ones. There is definitely a season, and the seasons vary in how prolific the trees are. During the drought, many orchards were cut back to stumps for a couple of years to protect them for when there might be more water. They are now looking healthy, and should be productive again by next year.
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This had me smiling! Well done! My teen would agree with you on your love of avocados. 🙂 🥑🥑🥑
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Thanks, JR. I buy one every week (sometimes more, when they’re cheap) and wait with great anticipation for it to ripen. You’d think I would tire of them, but I never do. Here is an old blog post about my guacamole obsession: https://justjoan42.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/gwawdodyn-it-is-what-it-is/ 🙂
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I love your poem, even more so than the fruit. This slimy green berry (technically, it’s a berry) has a weird mouthfeel to it that I’ve never been fond of. My wife loves them, though, and occasionally I can enjoy them also. But I’d never search over moons and mountains, or through valleys of shadow, for a slimy avocado.
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Really, Tippy? It’s a berry? That’s like finding out a peanut isn’t really a nut! The mouthfeel is exactly what I love about them. Fruits and vegetables chockfull of good fat are hard to come by. Avocados are like, a dieter’s dream come true. My first experience with avocados was guacamole served at our end-of-year party in high school Spanish class. I was not hip to the bowl of green slime either, but the teacher said we couldn’t have any chips unless we tried it. I don’t remember exactly when my feelings changed, but it was a total 180. 🙂
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Here’s another fun fact about the avocado: The survival of the avocado tree is entirely dependent upon human beings. In former times, the giant sloth ate the fruit whole, then deposited the pit wherever he took a crap. And that’s how new trees could propagate. But then the giant sloth went extinct. Now humans plant the pits (and not in the sloth way). But if we didn’t do that, the tree could not propagate, and would go extinct.
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Wow, you are just full of information! How funny that sloths were avocado lovers… maybe I am genetically related to the sloth. I would plant all my avocado pits in the back yard if the trees thrived here. Just think, I could sell off my surplus to the grocery store and make a small fortune. 🙂
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It’s green gold. You’d be very popular and rich.
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Love avocado and I have precisely one in my fridge for chips and guacamole for lunch today😂
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Best lunch ever! On rough days at work, when I needed to go to my happy place, I’d take my lunch break at the local park. I’d eat my guacamole and chips in the car, parked under a shady tree, listening to NPR on the radio. 🙂
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Ah, the simple pleasures of life
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I don’t like avocados, but it turns out I like poems about them. Who knew?
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Poems about avocados are almost as good as the real thing. 🙂
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I had to laugh at your “A stockboy’s near / So I bend his ear”. I do the same when Loma Linda Market is out of Comice Pears, the only pear I like. I hear myself whine when I plead, “When will you have more?”
And just to arouse your jealousy…my next-door neighbor has three avocado trees, a Bacon, a Fuerte, and some other variety. They keep me supplied with all I can eat when they’re ripe in sequence. I don’t think you can buy these because they don’t travel as well as the Haas but should you come to visit when they’re ripe, I’ll keep you supplied.
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I am a lover of those little ataulfo mangoes and seek them out the same way you seek out comice pears. Yes, there are other varieties, but ataulfos ripen reliably into tangy-sweet delights. Well worth bending the stock boy’s ear. I’m jealous of your easy access to all those avocados. Do bacon avocados taste like bacon? Are fuerte avocados more intense? Recently, my neighbor got a package from her sister in California, a bag of little lemons from the tree in her yard. OMG, I could smell them from fifty feet away. They are the color of sunshine, have thin, supple rinds, and are positively bursting with juice. In comparison, lemons from the supermarket are unscented, pale, thick skinned, and quite dry. 🙂
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I, too, love avocados. Possibly to the point of shameless gluttony. 😛
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How does Jett feel about them? 🙂
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Jett loves carrots and cucumbers… but it seems my gluttony has prevented him from having the opportunity to ever try an avocado. 😜
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Reblogged this on Vijayagiri views.
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I love a good guacamole too, but try this once (my favorite appetizer):
Halve the avocados and remove the pits. Mix up some balsamic vinegar, a splash of olive oil, some mustard and a little honey and then pour the mixture into the hole where the pit was. Eat with a spoon.
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