I’ve spent rather too long a time in the last two days watching avocado videos on Facebook and Twitter. I didn’t even have to looking for them. Somehow, because I said the word into the Podcast air, they just appeared, like a whining child the minute you touch the telephone app on your device.
Truly, I read that our (and by ‘our’ I mean a group from which I fundamentally exclude myself) obsession with the avocado is causing a worldwide increase in avocado prices, so high is the demand. After watching a two and a half minute face-umentary about a restaurant that only cooks things with avocados, in which the chef announced that this was not a fad and would never go away, I set the stop watch on my phone so as to be ready to pinpoint the moment of the inevitable demise of avocado culture. The bubble is going to burst. The toast is going to get stale.
In the meantime, we rove over the landscape adding avocado to practically everything–trying to turn ordinary ingredients into extraordinary brownies and Ice creams and smoothies, trying to give meaning to our empty lives by discovering that if you stir organic free range honey to your cocoa powder and avocado mixture you definitely have created a healthy fat “dessert” that pushes back the terrible purposelessness of who we are (and by we I mean every body but me).
Avocado banana ‘ice cream’, coffee in an avocado, an avocado ‘burger’ with no bread and no burger, honey and avocado bark–just to name a few–are today’s equivalent of quinoa and coconut oil risotto, this moment’s answer to the alarming reality that hundreds of earthquakes are going on underneath yellow stone national park. The cosmos hurdles towards its demise and we seek desperately for hope in the organic avocado groves of indigenous Mexico.
The Avocado Cannot Save You! It’s soft creamy interior cannot bear the weight of your narcissism and white privilege. You need a savior! Something strong enough to bear the weight of your insecurity and pathetic pay check.
And that is Tea. Only tea can bring the disparate elements of our fractured human community together. And that’s because tea, also the conveyer of antioxidants to the toxin laden, is psychologically what you need. You don’t need therapy (…well, that’s not true, you probably do), you don’t need another hipster culinary fad, you don’t need ultimate meaning, you just need to pass quietly into the sanctuary of your kitchenette, fill your time saving hotpot with pure filtered water, turn it on, rummage in your cupboard for the pot you know you must possess, if only you had properly kon maried your hovel you would have known where it was, having held it in your hands and known, instinctively, that it would bring you joy. There it is at the back. You haul it out, dust it off, and by then the water is right hot so you pour just a swish into the pot and let it sit, to warm. Now, where is your tea? It’s got to be in there somewhere. Good, strong black tea, not some froufrou bilge with a twinning’s label. Something real. Bewely, or Yorkshire Gold, or PG Tips…that’s probably all you can get this side of the Atlantic. Now! Hurry up! The water is coming up the boil, but you don’t want it to actually boil! Don’t panic, but you don’t want to have to start all over again. Dump the warming water out of your pot, and put your tea in. It’s ok to use a ‘bag,’ a sachet really. The main thing is that you’re not anywhere near your microwave. If you avoided that pitfall you can be forgiven for not having loose tea on hand. Now, you’ve either put in one bag for a small pot, or two for a massive one, and so you can pour in the water, which is right up to the boil but not actually boiling, right into the pot right over the tea. And then you clamp the lid on fast and shove on the cozy. Then you can breathe a sigh of relief.
You gather the pot of tea, with cozy–not because you self identify as a girl, but because that keeps the tea hot–mug, and room temperature milk and go sit with your beloved interweb. Not cream. Milk. And not hideously cold milk. It’s not going to go off if you let it sit on the counter for half an hour or something. Stop freaking out. about. everything. The milk shouldn’t be that cold. It ruins everything. Ok, so, it’s been three minutes. You can drink the tea. Really, it’s better if you pour a splash of milk into the cup and then the tea right over, but that’s just my preference. If you’re worried about too much milk you can put it in after.
So now you can sit there, and drink that hot milky solution to many of life’s difficulties, Ovaltine not withstanding, and be fortified not only by the gentle caffeinated lift that will carry you several hours past the hard crash of a cup of coffee, but also by the calm sense of peace and sanity that will pervade your whole being.
For heavens sake, or whoever’s if heaven isn’t really your thing, put down that wretched and by now too brown avocado and move on to a better and more mature way of life. It’s the only way. Pip pip.
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