Guacamole

• 3 large Hass avocados
• 1/4 white onion, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 sprig cilantro
• 2 tablespoons lime juice (about 1/2 a lime)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 bell pepper (any color)
• Optional: red pepper flakes

1. Cut avocados in half and scoop flesh into a bowl.
2. Finely chop onion and mince garlic. Remove leaves from cilantro sprig and discard stem.
3. Add chopped onion, minced garlic, cilantro leaves, lime juice, and salt to bowl with avocado. With a fork, mash contents together until combined.
4. Taste, and add salt to taste (and, if using, red pepper flakes).
5. Slice top from bell pepper, and remove seeds and pith. Slice into bite-sized pieces.
6. Garnish with cilantro leaves and serve!

There is no right or wrong way to make guacamole - the base is avocado, onion, and lime juice.

From there, you can change how you slice or chop each ingredient, you can add more or less of each ingredient to your taste, and you can even add a few things, like corn, jalapeños or other spicy peppers, or tomato. Experiment with what you like!

Avocados go back thousands of years. The avocado, first known as the ahuacate, has been cultivated and eaten in Mexico, Central America, and South America as far back as 500 BCE.

The Aztecs invented guacamole. When the Spaniards arrived in the New World, they discovered an Aztec sauce called ahuaca-molli; molli was the Nahautl word for “something mashed or pureed.”

Avocados have been rebranded. In the early 20th century, our favorite mashable fruit went by the unappealing name “alligator pear,” due to its bumpy green skin. The California Avocado Growers’ Exchange, a trade group, complained in a 1927 statement “That the avocado … should be called an alligator pear is beyond all understanding.” Alligator pear disappeared, and the fruit was called everything from calavo to butter pear to avocado pear before avocado finally stuck.

The avocado has famous relatives. The avocado plant is a member of the Lauracae Family of plants, which also includes bay leaves, cinnamon, camphor, and sassafras.

A mailman patented the most popular avocado variety. There are more than 400 varieties of avocado grown around the world, but the Hass, grown mostly in Mexico and California, is the most popular. A postal worker named Rudolph Hass purchased the seedling from a farmer in 1926 and filed a patent in 1935. The original tree stood, and bore fruit, for nearly 70 years in La Habra Heights, California.

California dominates U.S. avocado production. The state of California accounts for nearly 90 percent of all avocados grown in the United States, with the bulk of farms centered in a five-county region of southern California.

Mexican avocados were once banned in the U.S. Beginning in 1914, Hass avocados were not allowed to be imported to the United States from Mexico. After a two-year debate, the USDA lifted the ban in 1997 — although approved farms were only allowed to export their crops to 19 U.S. states and were still forbidden from selling in California. In 2002, the U.S. Federal Hass Avocado Promotion, Research, and Information Order was established, and today Mexican avocados are allowed in all 50 states and avocados are eaten and loved all around the world!

The biggest guacamole serving ever weighed as much as some elephants. A Guinness World Record was set in 2013 when a group of 450 students in Tancitaro, Michoacan, Mexico prepared a serving of guacamole that weighed 5,885.24 pounds, or almost 3 tons. Asian elephants can weigh anywhere from 2.25-5.5 tons.