Avocado Love

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, with parents who possessed decidedly bland, predictable tastes in food, I was not exposed to avocados. Not once. The only thing I knew about them was that they were the main ingredient in guacamole, which I never tasted because my mom thought it was gross; I just assumed I wouldn't like it, either. (Note to moms out there: if there's some good-for-you food that you don't happen to enjoy, you should still buy or make it for your kids to try. They might like it, and it doesn't mean you have to eat it yourself!)

Anyway, after moving to California eight years ago, I suddenly discovered this wonderful little fruit! Now, I eat avocado almost daily.

Fun Avocado Facts (courtesy of www.avocado.org):

*Avocados were once a luxury food reserved for the tables of royalty.

*California produces about 90% of the nation's avocado crop. San Diego County is the Avocado Capital of the U.S., producing 60% of all the avocados grown in California.

*The avocado's smooth, creamy consistency makes it one of the first fresh fruits a baby can enjoy. Sodium- and cholesterol- free, avocados contain valuable nutrients including 8% of the recommended Daily Value (DV) for folate; 4% DV for fiber and potassium, 4% DV for vitamin E; and 2% DV for iron. A serving of avocado also contains 81 micrograms of the carotenoid lutein and 19 micrograms of beta-carotene. Per serving, avocados have 3.5 grams of unsaturated fats, which are known to be important for normal growth and development of the central nervous system and brain.

Some of my favorite ways to eat avocado:

*In a sandwich, mashed up and spread on the bread.

*Mashed up and mixed with fresh salsa (basically homemade guacamole) and served with chips.

*Cut into small pieces in a salad.

*Sliced and mixed with sliced tomato, with a sprinkling of sea salt on top, as a side dish to almost any entree.

If you haven't caught the avocado train yet, hop aboard! You'll be glad you did!

The Cow Train

My brother, Nate, and I were in Oregon on Labor Day, and we spent a few hours with my parents, my sister, Anna, and her two boys at a farm. My 2-year-old nephew Ben really enjoyed sitting on the old tractors and going down the inflatable slide with his Uncle Nate, ascending the climb-able hay pyramid with his mommy, and imitating the rooster in the barn. Then Anna and I decided it would be fun to take Ben on the “Cow Train” for an idyllic little tour of the cornfields and pumpkin patches before lunch. So we paid our $2.00 and settled in to enjoy the ride. Don’t we look happy?


That sense of joyful expectation soon gave way to a sense of “What in the world did we get ourselves into?!!!” and “How soon is this going to end?”

The way this “train” was constructed is there’s a guy on a four-wheeler type of vehicle pulling a chain of these little “cars” made out of plastic barrels with wheels attached, painted to look like cows. They did include seatbelts, which is a good thing, seeing as how….well, we’ll get to that in a moment. But the seats were not padded in any way, shape, or form, which was not a good thing, seeing as how…well, just keep reading.

The man driving this train (I shall fondly refer to him as The Torture Master from here on out) either had to go to the bathroom really bad or he thought we were being chased by a swarm of angry wasps, because once all the victims, er, riders were in place, he tore off down the bumpy lane as if he were racing a cheetah! I think I caught a glimpse of some corn fields before the first turn, but I was bouncing around so much that it might have just been tall grass. Thank goodness for those seatbelts I mentioned earlier, or I’m sure Ben would have bounced right off of Anna’s lap and onto the side of the road! I’ll just say that it’s a good thing we decided to go before lunch and not after.

As we sped along, I noticed that the roads were very dry and dusty. I could tell because the huge wheels on the contraption The Torture Master was driving were showering those of us in the first few barrels with a fine, gritty layer of terra firma. “So that’s what I’d look like with a tan,” I thought as I looked down at my darkening arms. As our dusty hair blew in the wind and we tried not to breathe, I thought I glimpsed some large oranges lying in a field – oh wait, those were pumpkins! Too late to get a closer look, though…they were already far behind us.

After what felt like hours (but was, in reality, probably less than five minutes), we came to a fork in the road. Finally, we were going to head back! But wait, oh…no! He turned left instead, away from where we started! I gripped the sides of the barrel, white-knuckled; steeling myself for more jolts; closing my eyes against the dust; feeling a new kinship with the tin cans people tie onto the backs of newlyweds’ cars.

If you had been watching as we raced by, you would have thought that my sister and I were having a good time…we were even laughing! But it was more a laughter of bewilderment, of shock, of “We paid good money for THIS?!” – it was not a laughter of enjoyment, I can tell you that!

Finally, we rounded the last corner and the cow train screeched to a halt back at starting position. As we unbuckled and shakily stepped out of the barrels, trying unsuccessfully to wipe the dust from our hair and clothing, I had to suppress the urge to shout out a warning to the people waiting in line for the next ride: “Spare yourselves the agony and get away while you still can!” But I kept silent as I glanced at The Torture Master, who was busy accepting people’s dollars and strapping them into the plastic cows. I think I heard him give a sinister little laugh under his breath.

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I didn’t get any “after” pictures, but just imagine something like this:

Scrabble-tastic!

While I was visiting my sister in Oregon last week, we came up with a fun way to spend an evening. She suggested playing Scrabble, and then I suggested that when we were finished, we should each write a story – using all the words from the game at least once. So that’s what we did!

Anna thoroughly enjoyed my tale of a hapless teenage boy smitten by a girl he knew from band, only to discover upon visiting her home that she was a bit, um, odd. And I was laughing so hard that it hurt when she read what she had written about pirates trying to appease the sea after an oil slick (complete with pirate-y voices). It was really cool how we were using the same words as starters and came up with such completely different stories!

We had so much fun that we decided to do it again the following night, and I think it will become a regular event during future visits!

Both of our husbands (hers from the other room and mine when I told him on the phone about it later) expressed their opinion that our choice of entertainment was something akin to Chinese water torture. All I can say is, it’s their loss!