© Courtesy of California Avocado Commission.

10. The avocado once had a well-entrenched reputation for inducing sexual prowess. Avocados were not bought or eaten by any person wanting to keep their good name.
9. Fallbrook, California is the Avocado Capital of the World.
8. September 16th is National Guacamole Day.
7. The annual California Avocado Festival attracts 100,000 visitors to southern California every October.
6. Avocado is the only fruit color to define a generation.
5. The most common recipe for the avocado is some type of guacamole. During Super Bowl Sunday, in the US, about 50 million pounds of avocados are consumed.
4. All Hass avocados trees are grafted from one original Hass discovered by Rudolph Hass in the early 20th century.
3. Avocado calories have the highest protein content of any fruit.
2. The avocado tree is used as a warehouse; avocados can be kept on the tree for months after reaching maturity. They only soften when picked.
1. Avocados are a nutrient booster – Avocados act as a “nutrient booster” by enabling the body to absorb more fat-soluble nutrients, such as alpha- and beta-carotene as well as lutein, in foods that are eaten with the fruit.

Absolutely Avocado – “Take your taste buds beyond the ordinary with more than 50 recipes featuring the buttery smoothness of this favorite fruit. Soothe your palate with the delicate flavors of Avocado Crab Puffs. Warm up a cold winter’s night with Avocado and Almond Soup or impress your friends with your zesty Guacamole with Attitude. 24 color photos.”

Guac Off! – A humorous look at the avocado while presenting irresistible recipes. Every review has given it 5 out of 5 stars! “With 30 recipes for classic exotic and extreme guacamoles there is a guac to suit every occasion from the green chile-enhanced Brooktown Classic to the ultra-spicy Scarface Guac.”

Avocado varieties, known to botanists as “cultivars,” are created by grafting branches from an original “mother tree” onto rootstock. The seeds from a given tree will not produce trees with fruit of the same quality and characteristics.

Avocados from different varieties vary in overall size, while avocados are long and skinny, others are much more round. Different varieties also ripen at different times of the year so we can enjoy avocados year round. Skin color also varies – from a somewhat smooth green skin to a very rough, bumpy dark green/black.

Hass avocados are probably the best known here in the US – it produces fruit all year long and accounts for over 80 percent of the worldwide commercial product and over 95% of what is grown in California.

© Courtesy of California Avocado Commission.

Other named varieties include Anaheim, Bacon, Creamhart, Duke, Fuerte, Ganter, Gwen, Hass, Jim, Lula, Lyon, Mexicola, Mexicola Grande, Murrieta Green, Nabal, Pinkerton, Queen, Puebla, Reed, Rincon, Ryan, Spinks, Topa Topa, Whitsell, Wurtz, Zutano. Over 1000 named varieties are known, but only a small number are grown commercially.

Here is a brief primer at Gardenweb.com with questions and answers. They say it takes between 3 and 4 years before a tree will “begin setting fruit.” Note that the growers at the Avocado Growers Association suggest it could take much longer.

Buy a 5-year old avocado tree from Clifton’s Nursery for $69 at Amazon.com. According to avocado.org, it takes 7 to 15 years for an avocado tree to begin producing fruit. We found Zutano and Bacon varieties.

The Avocado Growers Association has the best concise directions for growing an avocado from seed.

Finally, a discussion with video of one person’s experiments with growing avocados from seed.

Avocado.org has almost 200 videos, many are discussions with growers or watch this video on cutting an avocado.

I struggle mostly with saving money while shopping for food because its hard to buy produce for one without spending a lot of extra money for small portions and a lot of packaging. When I buy regular-sized things, they tend to go bad before I can finish it. I hate to waste food because it feels like I’m throwing money away! Do you have any advice on how to shop more frugally for one?

I understood exactly were Elizabeth was coming from. I am single and live alone except for my beloved tri-colored corgi. I have a small 720 square foot 1/2 duplex with a tiny kitchen and very messy pantry.

At the end of 2008 I was working in the hospital building industry. The industry just tanked and all of a sudden I stopped working for my client. I found myself happily broke, moving in the direction I wanted to be moving in and now having to cook my own meals. I wasn’t even sure if I remembered how to cook for one person.

I had been single for ages but hadn’t done my own cooking. The culture I had been working was one where you went out to lunch every day with your co-workers. This entailed a $10.00+ meal of varying degrees of nutritional goodness. The meals fell into the categories of bbq, mexican, chinese, southern and foods from your childhood.

Dinner was eaten out or whatever snack food and condiment combination I came up with from my fridge. That is one thing about being single you have a great condiment selection. I am very partial to pickles, olives, pestos and mustards.

And I have definitely gained some weight over the last couple of years embracing this lifestyle. This is not something I am happy about. I am short and when I gain weight I start to look alot like a fire hydrant. Not particularly attractive. Plus being in my mid-40′s now with bits falling off I am hyper-aware of health and eating.

So I searched around online to see if there was any web sites with tips and so forth for the single kitchen. I thought it would make my transition to home cooker on a budget easier. There wasn’t to much out there but I did learn how to potion out 24 servings of chili to freeze but that was about it. Which is really surprising considering that according to Euromonitor International:

• The number of one-person households worldwide reached 202.6 million in 2006, up from 153.5 million in 1996;
• The trend of single households is closely correlated to culture and living standards. As such, developing regions tend to have a considerably lower proportion of single households than developed regions;
• Most single householders fall into one of the three categories: single young professionals who can afford their own place, middle-aged divorcees, and elderly people who tend to be on a tight budget;
• The proportion of single households is highest in developed countries. In 2006, one-person households accounted for 28.9% of all households in Western Europe, 26.7% in North America and 25.7% in Australasia;

That’s alot of single people that need help in the kitchen. I know 8 months ago I did. And it is not like I can’t cook because I can. It is just different when you are single. Even a friend of mine who is a stellar cook admitted to regularly eating canned tomato soup and toast in her single kitchen. And Elizabeth is right about the food waste. The USDA states:

• 91 billion pounds of food were lost by consumers and foodservice in 1995.
• Foodservice and consumer losses accounted for 26 percent of edible food supplies.
• Fresh fruits and vegetables accounted for nearly 20 percent of consumer and foodservice losses.

That is an outrageous amount of waste. Waste that I can’t afford in my kitchen. The USDA Food Plans budgets for my sex and age group anywhere from a thrifty $34.80 to a liberal $69.00 per week for food. That means I can be losing anywhere from $9.04 to $17.94 in food waste per week. I have better things I could be doing with that money than tossing it out.

For the last 8 months, I have been practicing and experimenting in a single kitchen to see just how best to operate a kitchen for one and save money. And now that we have the site relaunched I have a forum to expand on this topic.

I hope some of my posts help you in the kitchen and you find the rest of our site useful as well.

With prices for many food items and fuel hitting record highs this summer, restaurants were forced to raise the prices of their dishes beyond historical norms, producing a bitter proposition for customers watching the values of their homes and investment portfolios shrink.

Now, with food inflation expected to ease next year and the price of oil already in freefall, analysts will be watching whether restaurants can hold onto those price gains taken in recent years and allow the benefit of falling food costs to trickle down to the bottom line.

It may be tough to do, however. In the deep downturns in the early 1980s and 1990s, restaurants used falling food prices to slash menu prices to help consumers open their wallets, according to Morgan Stanley restaurant analyst John Glass. The dynamic didn’t play out in 2001 since the economic dip was not as long-lasting.

“When food costs fall and demand for food falls, restaurants typically use it as an opportunity to discount,” Glass said during a recent conference call.

Discounts, combo meals and value menus have become top of mind among restaurant executives in recent months as chains grapple with how to convince diners with less disposable income and more options from supermarkets to come to their tables. At times of higher ingredient costs such deals squeezed margins, but as food costs come down, selling items at lower prices won’t eat into profits as much.

And now, sticker shock at the grocery store?

Shoppers who note rising prices at the grocery store are not alone. The U. S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, over the last two years, food prices have risen faster than at any time since 1990. In 2007, prices for all food purchased in the U.S. increased 4.0 percent — up from a 2.4 percent increase in 2006, a Kansas State University specialist said.

While the Bureau reports that Americans typically spend about 10 percent of their after-tax income on food, low-income families are not faring as well, said Mary Meck Higgins, a registered dietitian and Kansas State University Research and Extension nutrition specialist.

A 2005 Consumer Expenditure Survey indicated that households earning from $10,000 to $14,999 (before taxes) spent an average of 25 percent on food; households earning $15,000 to $19,999 (before taxes) spent 19 percent on food, Higgins said.

Retailers who combine food, general merchandise and value have been surviving the recession better than most, but even Wal-Mart and Costco haven’t been as creatively aggressive in using that formula to promote their stores as has Grand Rapids, Mich., based Meijer.

With stores in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, Meijer has recently benefited from trouble at Sears Holding, which reduced the threat from Sears and Kmart. But it has been getting socked by the expansion of Wal-Mart and Target in the markets where it operates. In response, Meijer has become more food oriented, expanding service and gourmet operations as it builds in better apparel, housewares, electronics, pet products and sporting goods. Even when introducing fancier products, though, it promotes value — for example, placing wine near the prepared dinners it displays to offer a less expensive but elegant alternative to eating out.

More pointedly, Meijer has taking pains to convince customers that it understands when and where they need a break. For instance, as gas prices marched upward over the past couple of years, the retailer introduced a service that notified customers by cell phone shortly before it increased fuel prices at its store-run pumps in an effort to address the gas price concerns of customers in the drive-everywhere Midwest. Also, as drug chains, discounters and supermarkets lowered prices on generic prescription drugs, Meijer decided to provide the antibiotics most often prescribed for children free of charge, an initiative it positioned as a service to families pressed by increasing medical costs and bigger insurance contributions.

Now word comes that Meijer is providing a twist on a typical holiday promotion. As the season culminates, it is offering shoppers five-percent-off coupons for their next grocery purchase when they spend $100 on general merchandise, including apparel and housewares. Shoppers who spend enough can get up to four coupons in any single trip, then combine them for a maximum 20 percent savings on their next visit. Checkouts have been churning out the coupons since the program began on Nov. 30, said Meijer spokesman Frank Guglielmi, and will continue to do so as the late holiday shopping period peaks on Dec. 24. Consumers can redeem the coupons through Dec. 31.

Grocery stores, like consumers’ food budgets, are shrinking.

This month Wal-Mart Stores Inc. opened four pilot Marketplace stores in Arizona that are half the size of a traditional supermarket.

Supervalu-owned Jewel-Osco is testing its own small-format store in Chicago known as Urban Fresh. Safeway is trying its version in Southern California. And Whole Foods has said it is scaling down the size of its new stores.

The format has worked for some companies, such as Trader Joe’s, for years. But the idea is spreading as grocers are coping with rising costs and limited capital and find themselves pressed to find more profitable formats. It’s part of increasing competition with existing small stores and British company Tesco PLC, which launched its first small Fresh & Easy store about a year ago and now has nearly 100 around the West.

From the Dallas News: Beware of supermarket snares on your next trip

In the battle of the budget, the supermarket is a psychological war zone.

The aroma of fried chicken greets you at the door, and the irresistible scent of fresh bread wafts from the bakery. Brightly colored fruits and vegetables beckon nearby.

“It’s like aromatherapy,” said Phil Lempert, the Internet’s Supermarket Guru. “And they’re all intended to put you in the mood to buy.”

It’s no wonder the average family of four spends more than $700 a month on groceries, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

But even in a setting where everything has been tweaked to appeal to your shopping instincts, you can trim your food bills if you stick to a plan.

“If you go in and browse, to see what you like, you’ll come out with a heck of a lot more than you intended to spend,” said marketing professor Daniel Howard of the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.

“But if you go in with a specific list and say this is what I’m going to buy, you’ll be OK.”

That’s a challenge, though, because supermarkets are designed to appeal to the consumer’s senses, which seem directly wired to the wallet, he said.

Even beyond the sights and smells, the supermarket is something of a psychology lab.

The products you buy most – milk, eggs, meat – are placed as far as possible from the store’s entrance, so the shopper passes hundreds of products to pick up a pound of ground chuck. That’s a lot of opportunity for an impulse buy.

Other popular items are placed in the middle of an aisle for the same reason, stretching the time spent shopping.

“They learned that lesson from Las Vegas – the longer they keep you in the casino, the more you spend,” he said.” …finish reading