I don’t know about you, but I think the advice on how to disengage the stuck on pit from the knife was completely unnecessary.
(PS: Pitting is much easier when the avocado is nicely ripe.)
On a business trip a couple of years ago, a colleague and I stopped at an Olive Garden Restaurant for dinner. In the salad section, the staff had set up a beautifully presented ‘tower’ of halved avocados. Quite luscious.
Using our forks…
We.
Could.
Not.
Cut.
Through.
The.
Avocados.
“Unripe” is not a strong enough word. They had the consistency of dense latex rubber. Inedible. We called over a waiter and demonstrated what it took to cut through a piece. That shut down the Tower of Avocados.
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Came here expecting lots of animated gifs of people failing to do something absurdly simple, TV-infomercial style.
#Leaving Disappointed
(Is there a separate list for people disapointed in the bOINGbOING commentariat, as opposed to being disapointed in bOINGbOING the site, or is that all one thing?)
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The solution to not hurting yourself when cutting an avocado is to use caution and common sense. (Also, scoop the damn stone out with a spoon instead of stabbing around with the knife.)
I have a complaint to make. Avocados in the US leave much to be desired over. Haas avocados are well and all but the US is getting screwed. Check out the variety that’s common in Venezuela vs the puny Haas:
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Coming out against food is the hottest of takes. Well done.
So unnecessary too. A gentle squeeze on the half with the pit, and it comes right out.
That’s an egg.
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Needs a banana for scale.
But seriously, I found a very large non-Haas variety at a market once, and it was delicious. Never seen them around these parts again.
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A sweet pickle for your grilled cheese? It’s like I don’t even know you. Dill pickle or GTFO.
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I haven’t specifically looked for other varieties but i can only recall ever seeing the Haas kind, even at Hispanic markets. Though that would be the best place to look for non-standard groceries i would assume, other alternative is maybe buying online but i don’t trust buying perishables that way.
I like a good spicy gherkin
I’ve never heard of anyone else eating pickles on grilled cheese. Period.
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Oh, pickles on grilled cheese is the best. On this we can agree.
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The anti-millennial stuff only angers me now that millennials took the mantle of criticizing millennials.
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Paas, not Haas.
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Joe’s Instructions for Cutting an Avocado:
- Pretend it’s a mango but much easier to cut.
- Enjoy.
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Growing up in the L.A. area our neighborhood was dotted with avocado trees (and also a pomegranate tree). We had mostly the large, smoother skinned avocados, but we had some with red skin and dark green skin, and maybe a Hass thrown in for mediocrity’s sake.
For some reason, we kids found it thrilling to throw avocados into the streets where the cars would run them over. One time on the way to school we threw this huge avocado onto busy Duarte Rd., and a car hit the fruit squarely and with enough force that the pit shot out like a bullet and broke a shop window.
Luckily for us, the shop was closed and we ran like hell.
We also used to have pomegranate fights. Pomegranates were ideal because when they hit you, chances are they’d crack open and spray red juice all over the place.
Looking back I can only think of the dollar amounts. I probably burned through $500 retail worth of avocados and $1500 of pomegranates.
On a side note, I’d imagine the Hass variety of avocados are ubiquitous because they have longer shelf lives? Same goes for the cavendish (or as I like to call them the cadaverish) variety of bananas, which can keep as a green fruit under deep refrigeration for half a year or more (and which are artificially ripened before shipping by immersing them in methane gas).
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It’s Ethylene gas 
Also the thought of throwing avocados on the street makes me cry. My grandpa had a tree of the large kind and i always looked forward to visiting because they’d always have a ton of them on hand. Nom nom
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oh god. I’ve done more damage to myself by being lazy with a mandolin slicer than any knife I’ve ever owned.
This thread also puts me in mind of a friend of mine who worked as an extra on Rain Man. He swears that Dustin Hoffman had baskets of avocados sitting around that he’d eat like apples between takes, just biting into them, peel and all.
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