Did you know that there are “good fats” that we should be eating?

Coconut is one. Almond butter is another. They’re both pretty delicious.

But my favourite is avocado.

Last night, I mashed up an avocado and squeezed some lemon juice into it to use as a sauce on a baked pork chop.

This morning, I cut up an avocado and a tomato and ate them in a bowl with two fried (Gingerich organic) eggs and salt and pepper on top.

I was introduced to avocado when I lived in Mexico. There, avocado is made into guacamole (which we all know and love), blended with peppers and other ingredients into a creamy salsa, sliced and put on sandwiches and hamburgers, blended with thick cream as a sauce for flautas, and so much more.

Avocado finds its way into my salads as well. Its creamy smoothness is a nice counterpart to something like onion or garlic.

A simple and absolutely delicious way to enjoy avocado is to make your own guacamole. You have probably had it at restaurants or purchased the powdered mix at stores, but I’m here to tell you that you should be ashamed of yourself. That is, if you have never tried to make it from scratch, from fresh ingredients, you should be ashamed of yourself. Please disregard this if you don’t even like avocado at all.

To make your own guacamole, you need a handful of ingredients:

I usually use at least 2 avocados. You’ll want to add more if you’re making this for a party.

First, choose avocados that are dark, almost black, in colour, and have some give to them when you squeeze them gently. I would recommend buying avocados at least a day ahead of when you want to make your guacamole, to give the avocados a chance to ripen a bit more. The worst is when you crack open an unripe avocado and realize there’s no way you can mash it with a fork.

Cut the avocados in half, like the one pictured. Remove the pit. Scoop the avocado out of the skin with a spoon and into a bowl large enough to mix all of the ingredients.

Mash the avocado with a fork until any lumps are obliterated.

At this point, I usually add a few dashes of lime juice (or lemon juice if you don’t have lime), a few shakes of salt (I use free-running sea salt), and I press one clove of garlic into the bowl, then mix well. Then, I add finely chopped onion, diced tomato (cut as large or as small as you like. I like it chunky, but others prefer it smooth), and chopped cilantro.

Mix well.

Add more salt and lime juice to taste, and even more garlic if you’re that kind of person. For heat, you could add some finely chopped jalapeño or habanero or other hot pepper.

Et voila! Thick, healthy yummyness that you can dip raw veggies into, spread on a sandwich, put in a quesadilla or taco, eat with tortilla chips… the list goes on.

(photo source) (I didn’t want to make my own guacamole just to take a picture for this post. Sometime in the future I’ll make some and take a picture and put it here. 🙂 )

There are many other ways to use avocado. The sky is the limit!

Here are a few recipes I would like to try:

• Forgiving Martha’s Avocado-Chocolate Pudding
• Mark’s Daily Apple’s “Fat Guacamole Devils” (deviled eggs with avocado and hot sauce)
• PaleOMG’s Avocado Chorizo Sweet Potato Skins (apparently a great Superbowl snack)