Avocadoes are healthy, or so they say. One study said that if you eat avocadoes every day of your life, there’s a good chance you will rise from the dead after a couple weeks. I don’t eat avocadoes because they are good for you, I eat them because I like them.
The big problem with avocadoes is the ripeness factor. If you decide on an avocado salad for dinner that night and go to the store, the avocadoes will either be bright green and as hard as a block of concrete, or they will be a dark black mush. Rarely do you find a perfectly ripened avocado on the shelves at Kroger’s.
I saw an article recently that explained how to get an avocado ripe in one day. I didn’t believe it, but I decided to try the experiment. I bought a six-pack of avocadoes in one of those little green mesh bags. I felt them and they were hard enough to drive a railroad spike into a bed of shale. This would be the acid test.
The article said to put the unripe avocadoes in a brown paper bag along with a banana, seal the bag and come back a day later to ripe avocadoes. I don’t know what the banana does to miraculously ripen the stubborn fruits. Maybe it sings little banana lullabies? Regardless, I slipped a banana in the bag and returned the next day. I gripped each of the avocadoes and they felt like grenades without the pins. They were maybe harder – if possible – than the day before.
“I’ll give it another day,” I said, sealed up the paper bag, scolded the banana and let the avocadoes alone.
I came back the next day and discovered that if any of these avocadoes were larger and a bit more rotund, I could take them to a bowling alley and mow down all ten pins. They were as hard as the day I bought them. Maybe this banana can’t sing, I considered.
The next day – same thing. Whoever came up with the banana in a paper bag experiment was probably a salesman trying to sell a few extra bananas.
I then read about another way to ripen an avocado and this one works. Wrap an avocado tightly in aluminum foil, put it in a 225 oven for 25 minutes, and the avocado easily gives up its reptile-like skin and goes nicely into a salad bowl.
So much for the paper bag experiment, but I swear I keep hearing little tunes coming from the banana bowl.
