Try It Tuesday: Pineapple Guacamole

Ever get one of those crazy seat-of-your-pants ideas? I mean, like the ones where you wake up one morning and decide to go skydiving or learn how to break dance. The crazy ideas that you can't explain where they came from, all you know is that you have to do it. Sometimes those ideas come to me about food. I've recently acquired an addiction to guacamole. It's gotten so bad that at one point there was always a bowl of it in my fridge and more avocados on the counter waiting to be peeled and seeded and made into this delicious side dish. Then, I came upon a discovery eating out at a rather uninteresting restaurant, pineapple and cilantro tastes amazing together. Spicy, citrus-y, sweet, and juicy rolled into one. Then, as if in a cartoon movie, a lightbulb clicked above my head. What key herb is put in guacamole? Cilantro. Since, guacamole needs some some of acid to keep the avocados turning brown, I could trade the tomatoes for pineapple and make sort of a fruity fresh guacamole. An idea was born.

I regaled my epiphany to all my family members, my boyfriend, my co-workers, and they all said one word: "gross". Challenge accepted. I would make my creation and eat it all by myself if I had to, Pineapple Guacamole would be made. So one not so special day, my boyfriend and I made dinner together. I was equipped with five avocados, one large pineapple (actually, it would have been easier to use an already cored and cut pineapple, but if you want the full experience, grab a very large knife and go to town), fresh cilantro, onions, and garlic. After I hacked my way through the jungle that was pineapple, this bowl of guacamole turned out to be delicious, just as I knew it would be. I invite you on this Tuesday to add a little sweet, spicy, juicy, piece of heaven to your life. Especially if you want to try something new. Now, I'm not one for measuring so here is an approximation of everything in this dish. When it was finished I put it on top of some chicken breasts that I made with olive oil, but you could eat this with anything. Even your fingers. Enjoy!
Ingredients:

• avocados (4-5 depending on size and how many people you're cooking for)
• cilantro (use fresh and at your discrepancy)
• onion (chopped finely, or not so finely)
• garlic (fresh or powered)
• pineapple (I think I put in about half of the entire pineapple I had, but use what you like)
• lime juice (optional, you don't necessarily need more acid, but the flavor is nice)

 Peel and core the avocados and mash in a bowl to the consistency you prefer. Add in the roughly chopped cilantro, garlic, onion, lime juice, and pineapple. Mix together. Remember to taste test! Have a terrific Tuesday!

Frustrated Foodies Cover their Eyes

 Imagine you are the parent of this child, you might tell Tommy that he needs to stop playing with his dinner and eat it, or you might laugh and give yourself a little linguini facial as well. Of course Tommy isn't taking a crack at your delicious dinner, he is after all, like two years old, and you DID give him a messy plate of spaghetti. If you think about it from a different angle, you might feel like giving up and playing with the food you cooked instead of eating it. Do you ever feel like this? Does your spaghetti/linguini ever turn out in such a mess you just want to cover your eyes with it? I've heard that cooking is supposed to be a relaxing and even religious experience, but most of the time I only find it to be frustrating (see below post). Cooking should feel something like this. You should feel rested and relaxed and proud of what you made and want to share that with others. Sometimes, it just doesn't happen that way. Sometimes we have to cover our eyes because the oozy goozy yucky mess we made scares us and if we can't see it then it doesn't exist, right?

I propose that frustrated foodies unite! Don't throw your spaghetti against the wall, it isn't garbage! We can fix it. Food can be saved. My mother and I have a saying about baking cakes, "If the cake looks terrible, just make double the frosting. No one will know the difference". Let's come back into the kitchen, take the towel, plate, handful of noodles, from our eyes and fix our food problems.

Burnt Toast (About this Blog)

"I did it," I thought to myself, "I set my house on fire". I ran through the living room into the kitchen to the source of the foul smelling smoke, the toaster oven. I flipped the knob every which way, trying to make it ding, the ding that meant this horrible machine was turned off. I couldn't even see my breakfast, it was gone, the horrible machine beast had eaten it, I was sure. I opened the door of the oven, letting out more foul smelling smoke. There was my toast, the toast I only had meant to reheat (who wants to eat cold toast?), it was pitch black. No nice golden brown marks that taste so savory with butter, oh no, this toast was burnt like ash. What was I going to do with it? Throw it in the trash? Surely not. I did what any other sensible person would do, I grabbed the nearest pair of tongs and ran the said pieces of burnt mass out into the cold and threw them in the snowy garbage can. As I was fanning the smoke from my house, I realized, "How bad of a cook am I if I can't even reheat toast?"

Sadly, this is only one of the many instances that I've had with not being able to produce delicious food. I've tried to make pancakes when the stove wasn't on, I've tried making spaghetti without boiling water, and the list goes on and on. I hope to not only share some of these stories with you, but also to share my journey in learning how to cook. There are recipes that I have made up that have gone well such as Pineapple Guacamole (more on that later) and countless others that haven't. Maybe together we can learn to cook sophistically, and share recipes and techniques that are and are not successful. Tell me what you have tried to make and what you have always wanted to make. Tell me your favorite dishes and the worst thing you ever made. I will certainly tell you mine. I know I'm not a lost cause on cooking yet, there's still hope for me as long as there are people like me out there that can still burn the bread out of toast.