Avocado Boats

An unlikely topic for sure, but a great one.  As I was making an excellent latin-inspired turkey soft taco dinner this past week, I was also making fresh guacamole as a side dish. I’m slicing and dicing, scooping the avocados diligently lost in processed thought.  My daughter Bailey says to me “You should use those avocado shells like bowls to put the guacamole in.”  Keep in mind that Bailey is my own personal Martha Stewart, giving the advice of a hostess/sous chef sage since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. I respond to her by saying, “You know Bailey; that is an excellent idea.” So the idea of the “Avocado Boats” started right there from fruition to completion.

So, I started off by completely cleaning the inside of the avocado shells so that they were essentially empty vessels for latin-infused goodness. The idea here was to prevent any kind of bad stuff from growing inside of the avocado shells and to prevent any form of oxidation of avocado remnants. Once I had them cleaned out, I rinsed lightly the inside of the shells to make them nice and smooth.

I then proceeded to put them on a plate and stuck them in the freezer for an hour. When they came out, they were hard shells that could support just about any food dish. I plated the food with Spanish rice in one avocado boat and some of that fresh guacamole in another. Topped it with some cilantro and they were good to go!

As I was taking Bailey’s idea to fruition, I realized that this would be great for those who are on diets and/or worrying about portion control within their diets. Guacamole is high in good monounsaturated fatty acids, but one still shouldn’t eat too much of it. A side benefit of this with regard to guacamole is that it keeps the guacamole nice and chilled. The kids gave a definitive thumbs-up with a cheering “This is a do-again!” approval.  Olé!  Win for Dad, inspired by Bailey.