This blog is meant as an exploration and a celebration of food. Food as nourishment, food as art, but most of all, food as connection. Personally and politically, we all struggle with issues around food. Issues from body image to worker’s rights to environmental destruction transform the kitchen table into a battlefield.

Food binds us together with the people we love and with the soil beneath us. Simple bodily nourishment reaches us only through the work of the soil, the sun and rain, and the people who loved and labored along the way to put it on the table.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Anni's Avocado, Bread and Salt

Cut an avocado in half and take out the pit by gently slapping the blade of a sharp knife horizontally across the pit. Slice the avocado while still in the skin, and then squeeze the flesh onto slices of bread – any will do, but multigrain is best. Mash the avocado evenly onto the bread and sprinkle generously with salt. A slab of summer-ripe tomato is nice, too, between the avocado and the salt.


Avocado Sun

by Anneliese Kamola


I finished the decision by throwing my hat over the fence.

You seemed angry, but I suspect you were a bit excited, too.


We picked up the windblown avocados as if discovering gold:

One by one.

Cupping them gently in our hands until we could hold no more,

we finally pulled our shirtfronts out and made produce bags to carry them in.

I wanted to climb the trees to pick more glistening avocados,

but you insisted that we choose only from the fallen ones.

We shouldn’t steal, or at least not in that way.


We walked back through the park,

shirts stretching around bumpily green fruit.

I wore my hat.

The rolling hills shone in morning light.



I nestled against you in the window’s sun-square.

The countryside flew by. The hills were steep.

We waited for the spot; the spot where the tracks turn so sharply

we could see the front and back of the train at the same time.

Digging into our bags I brought out

an avocado, bread, and salt.

You pulled out your pocketknife.

We sat in the sun-square, close together, cutting, mashing, sprinkling -

eating delicate fruit.



Often, now, we sit on our deck at lunchtime,

sun reflecting off the wood and onto our necks.

We eat avocadoes mashed onto bread, with salt.




2 comments:

  1. Lovely. Avocados in Mexico are called "poor man's butter," an ironic name considering their dearness here. Also, and please excuse me, a certain line of the poem above reminded me that the word avocado is derived from the Nahual "acuacatl" which means testicle. Forgive my flipness please, but I'm sure you can guess which line!!

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  2. Haha! I think Anni (who wrote the poem) would appreciate that.

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