ONE MORE AVO

Just for the sake of completeness, here's Angie Dickinson with a (rather small) slice of avocado.

MORE AVO

Well, I tracked down some avocados at the Tesco Metro, (I mean it wasn't exactly an expedition) and a can of lump crab (i.e the white stuff) at the Co-op – a squirt of mayo, some lemon juice, a bit of seasoning and I was ready to go all Sylvia Plath:

It tasted fine and there was no food poisoning: so win, win.

And I did a bit more avocado research. It seems they were a tough sell in Britain partly because of the name ‘avocado pear.’  People assumed that since it was called a pear you could just bite into it, like a pear.  Some education was required and provided.  This is Australian:

I also discovered from Alan Davidson’s Oxford Book of Food that one of the first Europeans to eat an avocado was Fernandez de Oviedo (spellings differ) 

who ate it with cheese, as though it was an apple.  Other Spaniards added sugar, which I suppose made it more like a pear in certain respects.

THE NOT SO DUD AVOCADO

I remember my first avocado very clearly.  At my college you were assigned a tutor who was responsible for your moral and emotional welfare.  This included, and was pretty much limited to, inviting you round to his house for dinner with him and his wife, once in the entire three years.

And we had an avocado salad starter. At least I was pretty sure it was. I’d heard of avocados, might even have seen a picture of one, but I’d certainly never tasted one.  Obviously I didn’t want to humiliate myself by asking what I was eating, and in retrospect I do know that it was avocado.  It tasted good, even if it wasn’t quite the exotic sensation I’d been expecting.

These days I don’t eat avocados as much as I used to – and I’ve never eaten one on toast - but right now I’m in the middle of reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar – published in 1963 but set in New York in 1953, a time when I’d have thought that very, very few people in Britain were eating avocados.  Of course everybody else already knows how great The Bell Jaris, but I was especially taken by a scene in which the heroine goes to a fancy lunch and has an avocado filled with crab meat.  Something like this, I imagine (thanks LoveofCooking):

I was reading the book in bed last night and it sounded so good that I thought, first thing tomorrow I’ll be off down the shops buying an avocado and some crab meat (the latter in a can, no doubt).

But then I read on and it turns out that the crab gives ptomaine poisoning to everybody at the lunch. Plath is also great at describing the strangely mixed pleasures of throwing up.

To be honest this did blunt my appetite a bit as I fell alseep, but by the afternoon of the next day I was feeling strong enough to go down to the Co-op and buy an avocado or two.  I arrived there  - and they didn’t have any.  Is it possible that the avocado in England has become SEASONAL? 

I GOT THE NEWS

So another good one’s gone – Walter Becker (1940- 2017).

He was one of those characters whose music I loved and about whose private life I knew exceptionally little.

I suppose I was vaguely aware that he’d had problems with addiction and I knew he’d lived in Hawaii – what I didn’t know till I read the obits and the appreciations was that he moved there to quit his addictions and become an avocado farmer.  As detox programs go it’s a very novel one.

Beyond that I can’t find anything about his food habits or preferences – I’d guess that being an avocado farmer would pretty much make you hate avocados.

Of course there are of plenty of boozy references in the Steely Dan canon, from scotch whisky to retsina, from pina coladas to Kirschwasser.   Food makes fewer and less memorable appearances – a mention of salad in “Only a Fool Would Say That” – a reference to Mr Chow’s Szechuan dumplings in “Glamor Professions” and there’s Pretzel Logic, naturally.

But while on the search I did find a quotation from Donald Fagen about why he liked going out on the road with a band of young musicans:  "It's great hanging around with twentysomethings, they know all the good places to eat in town. I've been eating a lot of exotic food -- for me, at least. I'm more of, like, a grilled cheese guy."

Seems surprising.  If I’d ever given it any thought I’d have had Becker down as the grilled cheese guy, but like I say, I knew next to nothing of his private life.

IN OTHER SANDWICH NEWS

I’ve speculated elsewhere about the eating habits of the divine Tilda Swinton, having rather assumed that she lived on air, or orchids.  Certainly not on tomato soup.  

But now, here she is being interviewed by punters on Reddit AMA  (Ask Me Anything).  One of them, named DemJukes asks, “What is your favorite sandwich?”

        

And Tilda replies, “Today, I have to say avocado and goat's cheese.”

        

And then some wag with the handle UnbeatableUsername asks, quite reasonably it seems to me, “What was it yesterday?”

And he gets no reply!