With the advent of the rainy days, the season for 
avocados is just about over although you can still see the fruit being sold at the markets at ridiculous prices (40 pesos a kilo, 35 if you haggle). It will probably be several months before avocado trees abound anew with fruit and that’ll be another season for an avocado addict like myself.
Don’t get me wrong, the avocado is not my favourite fruit. The golden mango rules the roost in fruit list but now that a three-month addiction has happened to me, the avocado has temporarily dislodged the mangga from the top of the list … at least for the past three months.
Unlike the mango which you can eat raw and ripe and which you can preserve or turn to a jam, the avocado cannot be eaten as it is (unless you really eat it as is). You need to blend it with something or put it into something to come up with a guacamole; avocado shake; or at least an avocado salad dessert. The best avocados are the really clean ones – those without the hairs and fibres. They make preparation easy, and they make eating the fruit more enjoyable (just imagine eating fibre-choked avocado and every now and then you have to spew fibres upon fibres). These avocados are the best to use in whatever concoction you want to concoct.
Speaking of concoctions, the past three months of avocado addiction has witnessed my dessert-making skills, with the blender most of the time. For about 75% of all the times we had avocados intended for dessert at home, the fruits usually ended in a blender with condensed milk and ice – avocado shake. The other 25% was avocado chilled salad – avocado fruit with cream and condensed milk.
While the desserts-at-home usually occurred during the weekends, my thirst for avocado did not wan during the weekdays when I was in the office. Thanks to Fruitana in the third floor of the Podium inside RCBC, I was able to have a daily dose of large avocado shake for 60 pesos per big cup. Sometimes, the daily dose was actually a daily double dose of avocado shake. A big hit in the budget but a big hit in my stomach and of course, my craving.
When I try to analyze where this insatiable appetite for avocado in me originated, I think it has something to do with the avocado tree in our house in Laguna.
When I was younger and still very much a school kid, we had this big avocado tree growing in the corner of our backyard. If I recall correctly, twice a year it yielded hundreds and hundreds of avocado fruits which my family happily turned to shakes and salads (my family’s culinary expertise did not graduate to guacamoles and the like). Since the tree yielded too much fruit in one season, many of the fruits were left to rot or fell to the ground and rotted there since you can only eat so much avocados in a day. We actually welcomed the fruit thieves and they’re nocturnal fruit-gathering activities as they helped us in preventing food spoilage.
You could say that I was up to my ears in avocado during those times.
Unfortunately, the avocado tree stood on soft earth in its corner of the backyard. The rainy seasons slowly saturated the soil and made it difficult for the avocado tree’s roots to hold. One stormy spell, the backyard turned to one, big puddle and too much water and not much grasp was too much for the big tree – it toppled backward and hit the wall separating our property from the neighbour’s. The tree damaged the wall, taking out chunks of hollow blocks and littering both properties with debris. Fortunately the wall also kept the tree from totally collapsing.
After the incident, we tried to upright the avocado tree, anchoring it to several points in the backyard (and thereby accidentally creating several new clotheslines) and hoped the roots would continue to strengthen and grow deeper. The roots did grow but not deeper, instead the roots grew longer sideways which finally hit the same neighbouring wall and did much damage to its submerged portion. Plus, the soft earth wasn’t able to hold the massive tree and the anchor points were starting to become pointless.
At that point, we decided it would be best to cut down the avocado tree. With the help of several neighbours, that beloved avocado tree was cut down … down to its stump and the bigger roots were also cut.
The cutting of that avocado tree, I think, started this avocado addiction. With its periodic fruit-bearing, I was never deprived of avocado I can turn into a fruit salad or a shake. Without the tree, I now have to shell out hard-earned money to sustain an addiction.
Every time I see avocado being sold, I miss the days when avocado was in abundance and it was synonymous with addiction.
avocados is just about over although you can still see the fruit being sold at the markets at ridiculous prices (40 pesos a kilo, 35 if you haggle). It will probably be several months before avocado trees abound anew with fruit and that’ll be another season for an avocado addict like myself.Don’t get me wrong, the avocado is not my favourite fruit. The golden mango rules the roost in fruit list but now that a three-month addiction has happened to me, the avocado has temporarily dislodged the mangga from the top of the list … at least for the past three months.
Unlike the mango which you can eat raw and ripe and which you can preserve or turn to a jam, the avocado cannot be eaten as it is (unless you really eat it as is). You need to blend it with something or put it into something to come up with a guacamole; avocado shake; or at least an avocado salad dessert. The best avocados are the really clean ones – those without the hairs and fibres. They make preparation easy, and they make eating the fruit more enjoyable (just imagine eating fibre-choked avocado and every now and then you have to spew fibres upon fibres). These avocados are the best to use in whatever concoction you want to concoct.
Speaking of concoctions, the past three months of avocado addiction has witnessed my dessert-making skills, with the blender most of the time. For about 75% of all the times we had avocados intended for dessert at home, the fruits usually ended in a blender with condensed milk and ice – avocado shake. The other 25% was avocado chilled salad – avocado fruit with cream and condensed milk.
While the desserts-at-home usually occurred during the weekends, my thirst for avocado did not wan during the weekdays when I was in the office. Thanks to Fruitana in the third floor of the Podium inside RCBC, I was able to have a daily dose of large avocado shake for 60 pesos per big cup. Sometimes, the daily dose was actually a daily double dose of avocado shake. A big hit in the budget but a big hit in my stomach and of course, my craving.
When I try to analyze where this insatiable appetite for avocado in me originated, I think it has something to do with the avocado tree in our house in Laguna.
When I was younger and still very much a school kid, we had this big avocado tree growing in the corner of our backyard. If I recall correctly, twice a year it yielded hundreds and hundreds of avocado fruits which my family happily turned to shakes and salads (my family’s culinary expertise did not graduate to guacamoles and the like). Since the tree yielded too much fruit in one season, many of the fruits were left to rot or fell to the ground and rotted there since you can only eat so much avocados in a day. We actually welcomed the fruit thieves and they’re nocturnal fruit-gathering activities as they helped us in preventing food spoilage.
You could say that I was up to my ears in avocado during those times.
Unfortunately, the avocado tree stood on soft earth in its corner of the backyard. The rainy seasons slowly saturated the soil and made it difficult for the avocado tree’s roots to hold. One stormy spell, the backyard turned to one, big puddle and too much water and not much grasp was too much for the big tree – it toppled backward and hit the wall separating our property from the neighbour’s. The tree damaged the wall, taking out chunks of hollow blocks and littering both properties with debris. Fortunately the wall also kept the tree from totally collapsing.
After the incident, we tried to upright the avocado tree, anchoring it to several points in the backyard (and thereby accidentally creating several new clotheslines) and hoped the roots would continue to strengthen and grow deeper. The roots did grow but not deeper, instead the roots grew longer sideways which finally hit the same neighbouring wall and did much damage to its submerged portion. Plus, the soft earth wasn’t able to hold the massive tree and the anchor points were starting to become pointless.
At that point, we decided it would be best to cut down the avocado tree. With the help of several neighbours, that beloved avocado tree was cut down … down to its stump and the bigger roots were also cut.
The cutting of that avocado tree, I think, started this avocado addiction. With its periodic fruit-bearing, I was never deprived of avocado I can turn into a fruit salad or a shake. Without the tree, I now have to shell out hard-earned money to sustain an addiction.
Every time I see avocado being sold, I miss the days when avocado was in abundance and it was synonymous with addiction.
