Raw Avocado Snack- Filipino Style of Eating and preparation

Avocado is one of the most complete fruit snack in terms of vitamins and minerals. It is a good source of zinc which primarily boosts your immune system. If eaten along with Orange (which is rich in Vitamin C), these are the best prevention snack foods for common colds (try eating this fruit combination once you start feeling unwell due to some common cold). Avocado tree is tall which looks like below. It's fruit when harvested is big (bigger than apple, orange and mango) and the color is green.


Credits: sites.google.com/site/stansfreeebooks/Home/my-garden-universe/farm-photos

Preparation and Buying Avocados

The good season for harvesting avocados in the Philippines is from June to September. You can see a lot of avocados in the public market around these months. Most avocados are harvested when it’s already big but that does not mean it’s already ripe and ready/delicious to eat! This is one common mistake when buying avocados. The color after its harvest is green but you can see some noticeable changes in color days after the harvest. Take a look at the chart below:

Credits: theamazingavocado.com

Avocados will fully ripe (delicious and ready to eat) when its color is somewhat a mixture of violet and green. If its color is entirely green, most likely it’s not ripe. But if its color is full violet, it is very ripe. The texture of avocado is also very important and even more important indicator about its ripeness than the color. To check if the avocado is ready to eat:

a.) Press the avocado with your hand fingers – not too much pressure, only slight to moderate pressure on its skin.
b.) If the fruit is somewhat dented because of pressing with your hand fingers, its ready to eat as long as you can see some traces of violet color in its skin.
c.) If the fruit is hard to press with your fingers even with moderate pressure, it’s not ripe; especially if the color is mostly green.

Avocado does not taste good when it’s not ripe. It is always advisable to buy avocados when it’s ripe or near ripe. If you buy avocados which are fully ripe, it can be easily dented with any pressure because the skin is very soft. This needs special care when handling the fruit and do not throw it in your basket because it will break!

How to Prepare Avocado for Eating Raw

Avocado is a very delicious fruit only when it’s mixed with sweets like sugar. Below is my favorite preparation:

1 cup of brown sugar
1 ripe avocado

Procedure:

1.) Cut the avocado across its body, it should look like this:

Credits: http://valerietonnerhealthcoach.blogspot.com

2.) Take off the seeds from the avocado.
3.) Put half to one tablespoon of sugar into one side of avocado.
4.) Mix it with the avocado fruit.
5.) Do the same for other side of the slice, put half to one tablespoon of sugar and mix it.
6.) Eat and enjoy!