Have I mentioned that our 30-foot avocado tree has yielded at least 30 avocados so far this summer? All have been a little over a pound and, when they ripen, their nuttiness is a taste of heaven and they spread like butter. Nathan planted this treasure from one avocado pit in a pot when he came to live here. We have waited about eleven years for this tree to bear this much fruit.
The first seven years, not one fruit, which is normal. The past four years it has been just teasing us: first with 3 fruit, then 8, then 12, and last year 14. This year, this big boy decided to make a statement...HERE YOU ARE! We welcome the abundance and our friends love the extras.When an avocado gets ripe it turns reddish brown. When they ripen, they need to be eaten right away or else moved into a refrigerated humidrawer until they can be consumed. Don't wait more than a day or so as the flavor will begin to change once refrigerated.
The challenge of having such a productive tree is that the avocados present themselves all within a two to three week period, or at least it seems that way. Once picked, the clock starts ticking and it's a race to see which ones will ripen faster, or even more challenging, how many will ripen simultaneously. My husband has been making colossal sandwiches for his lunch just trying to keep up with them. He is quite an adventurous guy when he's starving.
Here's an alternative to having to eat all your avocados at once. Freeze them. I just used a method I found on Chowhound (find the post from California Avocado Commission). Caution: Be careful not to add too much lemon juice (less is better until you test the consistency) or the puree will get soupy and be unspreadable once thawed. I just used the pulse feature and didn't let the processor run on so a few tiny chunks of avocado were spared from the puree (a bit of "reality effect"). When I taste-tested the puree before freezing, I could not taste the lemon juice. The result was pure avocado flavor! Best of all, the thick puree is staying a vivid lime color in the freezer.
Sometime around Thanksgiving--when my husband is craving one of his avocado man-wiches, he will thaw out a container and I'll hear him howl with delight as he sinks his teeth into some fresh bread spread with our summer avocados. hoooooraaaaaa...
UPDATE TO THIS POST: Freezing avocados did not work as well as we would have liked. Once frozen, the avocao seemed to lose all flavor and the color turned as well. It all sounded so romantic on paper... but, for us, this idea was a dud!
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