Last weekend the Inland Empire Food Bloggers traveled south from Orange and Riverside counties to our farm in northern San Diego county for their monthly meeting. I had been looking forward to hosting this gregarious group for a long time. The first order of business was food! Coffee and avocado toast!
Selecting Perfectly Ripe Avocados
We had picked some fresh avocados about a week before the big day when Natalie, Sue, and Sara would visit us at the farm. Even though the avocados had all been picked on the same day, some were ready to eat and some were still hard. Avocados don’t begin to soften until they are picked from the tree. We passed some avocados around so everyone could hold them in the palm of their hand and gently press their thumb against the skin of each fruit to gauge whether the avocado was ready to cut. Some were definitely hard as rocks, some were beginning to soften, and some were just right! It takes practice to learn when an avocado is perfectly ripe and ready to eat.
Making Avocado Toast with Artistry
We cut the avocados in half, twisting the halves so that the seed was on one half, and no seed on the other. Then we removed the seed by gently whacking it with a small knife and twisting until it came away from the avocado. Instead of scooping out the fruit, we carefully pulled the peel off of each avocado half, so that there would be a large surface of perfectly naked avocado with which to work our artistry!
When you slice a large avocado this way, you can use medium size cookie cutters to make designs for garnishing salads, fruit platters, and avocado toast! Use smaller cookie cutters on the smaller pieces. After you finish cutting out designs, just mash up the remaining avocado to use as a base for your artistic avocado toast.
Watching food blogger friends get creative with avocados and toast is such fun! Isn’t it pretty the way the colors of the avocado show up in each shape? You can get some really lovely effects with the differences between dark green near the outside of the fruit (by the skin) and the yellow in the center of the fruit.
Add a few fresh local strawberries and some homemade lemon pound cake and you could just feel the love in the room! Food Blogger heaven!
It was time to take our cameras and go for a walk around the farm, exploring the groves, and learning about how avocados grow. Springtime is one of the most beautiful times to visit the avocado groves because the trees are still blooming and the baby avocados are beginning to appear!
Food Bloggers love tractors! And bulldozers! Who knew?
After our hike through the trees, we headed over to Myrtle Creek Botanical Gardens in Fallbrook, CA. , about 20 minutes from the farm.
The gardens, the old barn, the shops inside the old farmhouse…so much fun! The IEFB gals bought a Myrtle Berry Pie for me to take home to The Farmer: blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries baked into a scrumptious pie.
We had worked up our appetites, so of course we needed lunch! Cafe Bloom has sandwiches, soups, and salads with a deck for enjoying the magnificent views of the gardens. Or you can take your lunch in a basket to have a picnic anywhere on the grounds of Myrtle Creek.
One of the things I love about blogging is meeting wonderful people, finding new friends, and making wonderful memories together. Every blogger I have met is smart, creative, and loves to learn new things…people I want to get to know..and just genuinely nice, down to earth folks! Each of these women is so special…we’ve traveled together, camped together, cooked together, and we follow each other’s blogs too! It was great to have them come visit and I hope they’ll come again!
Visit these Inland Empire Food Bloggers:
Sara of My Imperfect Kitchen
Sue of It’s Okay To Eat The Cupcake Sue’s post about the day: Avocado Adventure
Natalie of The Devil Wears Parsley
Thanks to California Avocados Direct and the California Avocado Commission for providing gift bags for this tour!
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