On Avocados 🥑
When they fall, it's the sign of a hurricane coming.
Living in the Caribbean where avocados grow means I’m well aware of their seasonal nature: Either there are avocados, or there aren’t. I could go looking for the imported varieties, but I don’t love avocados enough to warrant going against Mother Earth in this way. I’ll eat them when they’re around, and it’ll be one of those seasonal food thrills, and then I won’t think about them again for a while.
I got so sick of avocados after Hurricane Fiona in 2022, when they all fell from the trees to protect themselves and we as an archipelago had to step up and eat them all at once. My husband despises avocados, so it was all me. And it was at this moment that I so viscerally experienced the misery of one crop’s abundance, of having to really eat for the earth rather than for myself. I thought, I was a strict vegan for six years! I’m a vegetarian! I can do anything for Mother Earth! No—I cannot. It was the lionfish all over again (a story recounted in the last chapter of my book).
But I likely will again, as it’s one of those signs of storms: A lot of avocados, and the coquis stop singing.
Sometimes I long for them out of season, but in this case, it’s the feeling they engender in me of insouciance. The dense Hass editions remind me of leisurely lunches I couldn’t afford but often took as a freelancer living in Brooklyn. I can see it now, the green mush on some big, fat sourdough toast or sliced just so and fanned over the plate. An avocado does feel like wealth for me, because it reminds me of living indulgently when I shouldn’t have been doing so. (The piper makes a killing off me, darling!) And I only want guacamole with my burrito when I am really in a bad mood: Why does guacamole make me feel taken care of, in control? Am I just that much of a millennial?
Now I’m more likely to eat avocado when I’m not in a growing region because of its popularity on vegan and vegetarian dishes. I just had it last month in New York, on a kale Caesar, when the other options were chicken and shrimp. Avocado hardly has any protein, yet it’s our meatless meat in these cases.
It’s uncanny, really. I love receiving abundant other fruits and vegetables that I turn into syrups and candies and jams and pickles. Avocado doesn’t give in to these whims of preservation. I respect avocados for that, and I hope to never again experience such a glut of them. But when I’m somewhere that avocados don’t grow, I will find I can’t avoid them. How silly is that?
It’s interesting to me, always, to consider the ways in which seasonality is erased from a crop like avocado. What becomes a necessity, year-round, and why? I didn’t grow up eating avocado on Long Island. I can’t remember when I first saw one or even encountered guacamole, but it was likely in a burrito at Mexican Grill 2000 off Route 112. When I became vegan in 2011, I thought that meant eating a lot of avocado—as though I skimmed over something about it in the vegan contract I signed—and I have a scar on my left ring finger from a run-in with a knife before I understood how to get the pit out properly.
There are issues that come up, predictable issues, because of this taste for avocado, because of its contradictory health halo and connotation of indulgence. It’s a crop that requires a lot of water; overproduction has led to biodiversity loss, deforestation, and bad working conditions for those at the source. The Center for Biological Diversity recently put out a press release about how 25 organizations came together to ask the U.S. State Department to ban the import of avocados causing deforestation in Mexico. They’re growing now in Sicily, where areas that were once used to grow grapes for wine are now too hot.
One day, maybe, avocados won’t be an imported anomaly to those outside their growing regions, as those growing regions expand. Would the taste for avocado ever subside in the places where it didn’t always grow? Would avocados still be so desirable if there were so much excess? In my experience, at least, no. And it’s a very interesting lesson for what it means to eat in a warming world.
This Friday for paid subscribers, I send out The Monthly Menu, the roundup of my eating, cooking, and drinking, with a lot of recipe links and cookbook recommendations.
The next Desk Book Club discussion of Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala will be on June 28. Buy it from Archestratus for 20 percent off!
If you’re looking for cooking inspiration, remember to scroll through The Desk Cookbook.
News
The Preserve Journal asked me to answer their “Perspectives” questionnaire.
I was a guest on a new podcast called “Second Nature,” to discuss the question, “Does it Really Matter If I Eat Less Meat?”
My book No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating will be out in paperback on June 25. Please consider a preorder!
Reading
Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories by Colombe Schneck (translated from the French by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer)
loved this. not sure if you're a smoothie gal, but i think avocado is good in them (makes them super creamy obv) and diced avocado freezes pretty well IME!
We had about five or six trees when I was growing up in San Diego. What we get in Europe is disgusting mostly from Peru and the genocidal occupiers in the Levant. I actually planted a tree two years ago. My dad advised me on variety based on our climate and soil and we are getting our first fruit this year! The Sicilian ones are super expensive and tiny, not worth it at all, and it is always rich expats who try to gaslight me into believing they are good.