Holy Guacamole!

I have this class called performance conditioning, in that class we spend some time talking about nutrition. Nothing about intense dieting, but just about knowing what is going into your body. This is important because for actors, the body is the instrument. But it is hard because as college students we eat nothing that we have to spend more than five dollars on. Mostly, because we don't have more than five dollars. My performance conditioning teacher gave us a nice tip for groceries in the city. Go to a farmers market he said, you can get good, fresh food there for really cheap. But don't go in the morning when they first set up, go in the late afternoon when they are getting ready to leave. The reason you go at the end of the day is because they are more likely to give you things for cheaper because they would rather sell it for a dollar than pack it up because it is not as fresh the next day. I tried this and I got tons of fresh produce for really cheap. This tip really works. I went to the Union Square Farmer's Market and this place is really cool. It is amazing to see fresh food and actual farmers in such a big city like New York. This farmers market is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, all year long. Through the sun, rain, and snow. I think that is pretty amazing. 

This was my first time shopping at a farmer's market so I brought along my friend Grant Peterson. He is in my section at school. Not only is he a talented performer, he is a great cook. We both had a craving for guacamole, but all of the good guac at the stores were way too expensive and the cheap guac was just not worth eating. Grant promised to help me make guacamole out of my fresh produce if I shared it with him. At the farmer's market he helped me pick out the best vegetables for the best prices. When we finished our shopping we were so ready to make homemade guac.

Here's the thing, we didn't really have a recipe, so we just kind of made it up based on what we had bought and what we thought sounded good. We used 3 avocados, a few slices of a tomato, and some raw onion. We roasted corn, scallions, and some onions. Then we added just a spoonful of greek yogurt, along with a tiny bit of salt. Then we mixed it all together until we decided it looked tasty. And let me tell you, it sure was tasty. We made some pretty good guac if you ask me. We ate almost the whole pan. (yes we made it in a pan, because I have yet to invest in mixing bowls...) I had to sneak some into a tupperware for left-overs before we gobbled it all up. Not only was it super yummy, but it was cool to have made it ourselves and out of all fresh ingredients too. It was way more fulfilling and a lot of fun. We will definitely be doing that again. 

Grant and I also made some chocolate chip banana bread. This time my roomate Danielle joined us in our adventure. We may have gotten a little too confident in our skills in the kitchen because the banana bread (despite how delicious it looks in the photo) was really bad. For the guac, we made up the recipe and it went really well. So we decided to wing it with the bread too. This was a bad choice. My thought process was that I have made banana bread before, countless times. It was always something that my mom had me make and I loved doing it. I was sure that I could do it mostly by muscle memory. I figured between Grant's cooking skills, my experience with banana bread, and Danielle's extra hand we could figure out what to do. Yeah, I was wrong. I am not sure what we made, but it did not taste like bread. I don't know what possibly went wrong except for the fact that we used butter instead of shortening, no baking powder, almond milk instead of water, oh and since we didn't have any mixing bowls or a mixer we put the batter in a blender, yes a blender. For the record, that idea was Danielle's contribution. So I guess maybe we should have expected it to be bad. When it came out of the oven it smelled like it was going to be delicious and we were super excited. It didn't look quite like chocolate chip banana bread, but it smelled great. Cutting into it was only slightly disappointing and still promising. Then we tasted it and it was bad. The parts with a lot of chocolate chips weren't all that bad. But only because they were mostly chocolate. Anyway, it was a sad and unsuccessful experience. So next time we will be following a real recipe. But hey, at least we tried.