May 15: Guacamole

I hate cooking. I go out of my way not to cook. My daily diet consists of cold cereal and milk, a banana, sometimes a smoothie, trail mix and some variation of something "toastable" (i.e. Pop-Tarts, bagels and bread, or a leftover piece of pizza). Smoothies are the most extreme I'll get, but only because the cleanup is so easy. Throw a bunch of ingredients in a blender, drink it up, and rinse out the jar. Done! Other than smoothies, the craziest dish I know is Tuna Casserole.

It's about as easy as it gets, and I still hate making it. I hate dicing the onions and cooking the noodles. I hate scrubbing out the casserole dish before putting it in the dishwasher. I hate dividing the leftovers into plastic dishes that I can microwave later for a quick meal. The only reason I force myself to go through the misery of making the dish is because it tastes so great.

As much as I hate preparing things to eat, lately I have been on a huge salsa fix. I have a great salsa machine that perfectly dices the ingredients into a fine yet chunky concoction. I simply install the three-blade contraption, load my tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro, etc., lock on the lid and turn the handle. It does the rest. The best part of it all? Cleanup is an absolute snap! I've had so much success with my salsas that tonight I thought I would take my salsa-making skills to a new level. Instead of placing tomatoes into the machine, I bought avocados. I was going to try my hand at guacamole.

One of the things I hate most about cooking is that I can never get the recipes right. I hate buying all of the ingredients and making a batch of something only to later find out that it was all for naught. For whatever reason, it always takes me a few tries before I get any recipe right. Because of this inability to get things right the first time around, I had hesitations of even attempting the guacamole. Avocados are expensive and I didn't want to have a container full of nasty yet pricey green mush.

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I was absolutely shocked at how good the guacamole turned out. It is definitely some of the best guacamole I have ever had. I had to scrub the salsa machine a bit more than usual when I was done, but I have to admit that it was well worth it. I can't wait until I get home from work tomorrow so I can have guacamole on everything as I watch the Survivor finale.