Yes, You Can Freeze Avocado: Avocado Cubes

Making Avocado Cubes

Avocado hasn't always been the ubiquitous fruit easily found in every market. Not so long ago, it was usually a seasonal item, and finding any around in the winter at all was just about impossible. If you were really desperate for it, as I used to be, somewhere about the end of January when it felt like winter would never end, you went to a gourmet grocery store and bought it frozen. Yep, frozen. It used to come pureed in a can that looked like a frozen orange juice can. It also cost a small fortune.

Lately they've been on sale just about everywhere; my pal Amy and I loaded up at Whole Foods last week when the Hass avocados were a buck each. So many we didn't know what to do after we'd eaten our fill. Except to freeze the remains for when the weather is cold and blustery.

There's no real recipe. Just puree ripe avocados in a food processor, or a blender, adding 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon or lime juice per avocado. I like to pack the puree into ice cube trays and freeze it that way so I can take out just what I need for a dressing or dip. I just freeze the avocado puree in the trays and then pop the cubes out into zip top bags for storage. You may have to run the bottom of the ice cube tray under the warm water tap to help loosen the avocado cubes. If you don't want to use ice cube trays, use any freezer-safe small containers so you can defrost just what you need.

While the thawed puree may be too thin if you like really chunky guacamole, you can always wing it a bit my mixing in extra chopped tomatoes, or even mix it into mushed up peas or edamame for a sort of faux guac, along with tomato, onion and chile to make it chunkier.

You could also add a frozen cube or two to a really good spicy Bloody Mary (or Bloody Maria made with tequila). It'll make pretty, yummy green swirls as it melts into the drink.

This way, when avocados are out of season, and $3 each, you can just smile, and dip your chips.

Bagging avocado cubes.

Speedy Natural Microwave Ketchup No Added Sugar

Sometimes I'm just being so good about what I'm eating I can't stand myself; and then I find the cookies. Last night I had a nice grass-fed burger on one of my Funky Flax buns, with some smoked bacon on top and it was delicious. I also had this wonderful sweet, spicy ketchup and a pickle on it. Would have had red onion, but had none. I really do try to avoid grains,  sugar and its evil cousin, HFCS. Problem is even the organic ketchups, while they don't have HFCS in them, or even GMOs, they are full of sugar, and  not for me because I am not a modest ketchup user.  One serving? Hell, I just slather it on. I love the tangy flavor of homemade far more than the ubiquitous commercial stuff, although if that's what's available...

Now, last year I gave you a stove-cooked version of no sugar added ketchup, but when you are going to eat in an hour or so, it just won't be ready to eat in time. Hence this high speed version that you microwave for just 3 minutes. It's actually delicious still warm, but even better after it stands about an hour or longer.  Will keep about 2 weeks, covered in the fridge.

Oh, and I was so good about dinner last night, and then I DID find the cookies.

Speedy Natural Microwave Ketchup with No Added Sugar

Speedy Natural Microwave Ketchup with No Added Sugar

Note: if you can buy tomato products in glass containers, I highly recommend you do so as the linings of many cans still contain BPA. Read the label, it will usually tell you if the lining is BPA-free.

Makes about a cup.

6 oz. tomato paste
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
2T rice wine or cider vinegar
1teaspoon Cholula or other hot sauce
Liquid or powdered Stevia  (two servings worth depending on brand)
black pepper
1 tsp kosher salt

1. Mix all the ingredients in a 2-cup or larger microwave safe container.

2. Cove and microwave for 3 minutes. Remove and stir. Serve warm or chilled.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Friday: Recipe Overload

Every morning my email is filled with food newsletters, and recipe emails. Add to that, the blogs I subscribe to on Google Reader, add to that the list of periodicals like the NYT that have fabulous forward oriented food sections,  and add to THAT my enormous collection of cookbooks. Am working my way methodically through "Modernist Cuisine at Home", too. So many things I want to try. Recipe Overload. I just don't have the time or enough people to feed to cook all of this great stuff, but I sure wish I did.

Additionally, I have a lot of small kitchen projects going. There's a very pretty jar of Moroccan style preserved lemons doing their thing on my kitchen counter (and they will be a blog post once I get to taste them and see if they're great), kimchi in the basement fridge, and a batch of hot pepper sauce fermenting in the cellar. 

Moroccan style preserved lemons "brewing" on the kitchen counter

In the cooking and baking queue, I've also got a box of tapioca flour ready to make some crepes, both sweet and savory tomorrow, and I have a Yeasted Vanilla Cake from Aki and Alex over at Ideas in Food rising in my turned off oven since my kitchen is a little too drafty at this time of year for yeast to be really happy. Can't wait to bake this vanilla cake up later today, since it's total rise time is around 22 hours. Rising in the bowl, the yeast batter looks a lot like the pudding Woody Allen fought in his film "Sleeper". I am also hoping to find the time to make the Chocolate Caramel Peanut Bars from Hedy Goldsmith's "Baking Out Loud" since I am planning to go off of sugar for a while and they look like the perfect last bite. But that'll require a quick trip out to get more peanuts because I ate 'em. Ooops.

Oh, and blog posts to write for next week.Hoo, boy am I ever in recipe overload, but, you know, it's a great place to be. Until the gardening starts in a few weeks, then all bets are off. Although I'll still be in Recipe Overload.

Blog Ideas Just Drop From the Sky, Right? #150+.

Any time someone finds out that I write a food blog, they invariably ask how I come up with topics and recipes, week in, week out. It came up today. Caroline, a young woman I work with asked just that this afternoon. I told her ideas just drop from the sky. She laughed; but I was only half joking. I have no trouble coming up with things to write about, but I do have a problem coming up with enough time to cook and write. I was thinking about it while driving home from work and realized that in the past 10 months or so I've written more than 150 food-related short essays. Posted them here. Sheesh.

Should be in every good cook's kitchen, and on
every recipe developers bookshelf.

Ideas come from everywhere. A trip to a market and a pile of gorgeous red peppers in late Summer can start the ball rolling. A book, like Page & Dornenberg's "The Flavor Bible" can get me off on a cooking tangent. It's something I really like because it isn't a book of recipes, its full of ideas about what foods go together, a great jumping off spot. I highly recommend taking a look at it. A conversation with another cook about a family favorite will get something germinating, too.

Sometimes it's interesting to analyze something we take for granted, like good knives, or the herbs in our gardens that come back each year like chives or thyme. Other times I'm focused on what the garden is producing, like too many hot peppers, or an upcoming holiday feast.

It sure helps that I work in a kitchenware store, surrounded with coworkers and customers who are all about food. It also helps to have hundreds of cookbooks, collected over 40 years. Often, all I have to do is look at the cover and that reminds me of a recipe in that book that I made over, and over, for several years and then totally forgot about.

This post came from my commute home, sitting in traffic, and thinking how many times over and over I do certain things and I never get bored with them.  Like this. That's when I realized that I've written more than 150 blog posts this year and I feel like I've just exposed the tip of the iceberg. Inspiration really does just drop from the sky, doesn't it? Now if I could just give up sleeping, or make my day 28 hours long, I might have enough time in this lifetime to tell you about it all.

Declare Your Independence: Learn to Cook Real Food

There is no recipe today. No dirty spoons or measuring cups in my sink. No photos to upload. I'm actually going to work today, so the folks in our neighborhood will have enough skewers, tongs and Big Green Egg charcoal to throw the cookout of their dreams. We'll grill our burgers tonight.


While it's a national holiday, complete with charred hot dogs and fireworks, it's really about freedom from tyranny, from being told how to live your life. Sadly, if you do not choose to learn to cook and pay attention to what's on your plate, you are being tyrannized not by a king in a far away country, but by the big agricultural concerns, fast food companies and chemical companies. Because they control what's on the plates of those who do not cook. The truth is, you are what you eat. If you eat mostly fast food, microwave-ready meals and take out, you body is under the control of those who are filling your stomach with antibiotics, growth hormones, genetically modified foods, artificial colors, flavors and synthetic additives. Yum, huh? Like trying to drive a race car with a gas tank full of swamp water.

So much for the rant. You get my gist. If you are having guests over today, or it's just your spouse and kids, make everything on the plate be the best it can be. Real food. Homemade burgers with no pink slime. Your Mom's best potato salad. Corn from the farm just north of town. Show your independence by skipping the artificially flavored chips, and the dayglo colored, artificially flavored powdered drinks. Make real iced tea, or pop open a beer. Cook  from scratch using real food. You won't regret it.

Happy Independence Day!

The Bottomless Jar of Crème Fraîche

I wanted to re-post this because, well, it's MAJOR berry season, and there is nothing better than plain or lightly sweetened crème fraîche over fresh berries, or berry desserts. Then consider it over peaches, nectarines...Makes simple food what our family calls "RQ" – Restaurant Quality. Everyone is just so shocked that you can make this wonderful stuff so easily and cheaply at home. Enjoy!

I’m cheap. Well, sort of, but there are a few things I won’t spend a lot of money on even if I consider them essential. So many of my favorite cooking tools, my cars and my dogs have been bought used (except for the current dog), and even my husband is second-hand, although I DID get him in a kitchenware store. 

In the food department, I’m willing to pay good money for goodies like maple sugar and olive oil --- things I can’t or don’t have the time or skill to make myself, but it kills me how expensive something as delicious, easy to produce, and useful as crème fraîche can be when you like to use it by the glob.  It has a wonderful, nutty-tart flavor, it doesn’t separate when you boil it, makes a wonderful easy addition to pan sauces and can make a no-cook sauce in a flash with just a few herbs, spices and a dash of salt. It whips beautifully, and lightly sweetened, it is much better on many desserts than basic whipped cream. 

Sour cream doesn’t hold a candle to this stuff, except maybe in a baked potato or on top of a nacho. Crème fraîche is so simple, and soooo good!

Crème fraîche is one of those essential things. If there isn’t any in my fridge it requires an immediate trip to the market. Not to actually buy crème fraîche, just to get the ingredients to make it at home. I have bought the culture to make the real thing, and it does make a product closer to what I’ve eaten in France, but buttermilk, and pasteurized heavy cream are enough to make an endless supply, so I can wallow in the luxury of having as much as I want. When it's nearly all gone I can use the last bit in my jar to make more by transferring it to a small bowl, washing the jar thoroughly, mixing the remaining crème fraîche with two cups of cream and start the fermenting process again.  Fabulous and...cheap.

Time to start another batch of Crème Fraîche!

Homemade Crème Fraîche

1 pint of heavy cream pasteurized (NOT ultra pasteurized)

¼ cup of cultured buttermilk

Tools: spoon, measuring cup, and a very clean quart or liter glass jar with a cover

How: pour the ¼ cup of cultured buttermilk into the bottom of the jar, pour in the cream, stir gently and thoroughly, and either partially cover the jar, or leave off the lid and cover the top loosely with a clean cloth or a paper towel. Set it aside at room temperature for 8 to 36 hours (depending on how warm your kitchen is, and how thick you want the finished product). Stir gently once or twice a day if you think of it, and while you are stirring you can judge how thick it’s getting. Try not to lick the spoon, although I am totally unsuccessful at it. Just don't double-dip.

When it’s nearly as thick as you’d like (somewhere between the thickness of yogurt and commercial mayonnaise), seal the jar with the lid and pop it I the refrigerator. It’ll keep about two weeks, and if you notice that you’re down to your last half to quarter cup of the stuff, you can use your already made crème fraîche as the starter for your next batch. So you can fearlessly use up all that excess buttermilk in pancakes, pies and cakes, and keep that crème fraîche jar going just about forever. It’s bottomless. Really.