Guacamole

Coolest Pressure Chart Ever

Guacamole is made from avocados. Avocados are vegetables, meaning they aren't meat or potatoes, which means I don't particularly care about it. But my wife likes avocados, at least I think she does. She gets these ideas that certain foods are good for you, and that seems to influence her choices more than taste. Whatever turns your crank, sweetie.
    Avocados are problematic. They're kind of like bananas, they're no good until they are ripe, and once they are ripe you only have a few days (hours? minutes? seconds?) to eat them before they spoil and they're no good to anyone except vermin. Preparing avocados is not too difficult, slice around the pit, twist the two halves apart, whack the pit with a knife to embed the sharp edge in it enough to twist it free. Peel and slice. No big deal, unless it's already turned, and then you are confronted with a disgusting pile of goo that gets tossed. Buy a small bag of avocados at the store and if you are lucky only a couple of them will be rotten. I don't like it because I don't like disgusting things, but moreover it strikes me as inefficient. Go to all the trouble to grow, pick, pack and ship these little balls of goo only to have a quarter of them end up in the compost heap, if we're lucky.
   Then me sweetie discovers ready-to-eat guacamole at Costco. What's even better is that in comes in single serving packs. She's been eating it for a few months now and only one packet has come up bad. I'm impressed. Guacamole is not something that you keep around, mostly I get it at restaurants. It's not worth the trouble to prepare just enough for one or two people.
   I've taken up eating this guacamole as part of my new health regimen. It's pretty tasty, but it's got a little funny taste to it. It might be the spices, it's a Mexican dish after all, but I suspect it's preservatives. I mean how do you keep guacamole fresh for weeks on end? I finally broke down, got out my reading specs and read the label. No preservatives at all! How can this be? Evidently it is because they are using high-pressure cold-water processing. Oh? What in tarnation is that? I never heard of it. Somebody's telling fairytales.
     Actually, no, it's a real thing. The principles were discovered over 100 years ago. I suppose it's one of those things where the volume of product being processed has to be high enough to justify the capital investment. What's weird is that it sterilizes the food without turning it into goo.