I love guacamole.  The smooth, slightly bitter taste of fresh avocado, cut with the sour, clean taste of lemon, the pure pungency of raw garlic (I love garlic, especially raw), the sweetness of tomato, all rounded out with a hint of salt.

Guacamole, combined with some rice crackers, carrot sticks or healthy whole grain chips, is the perfect snack to lubricate a humorous, hand-waving, mid-afternoon conversation around the kitchen table.  It combines the 6 Ayurvedic tastes, making a balanced, nurturing snack to help foster communication and familial bonding.

Guacamole marks the beginnings of my dabbling in “Whole Foodism”, which began sluggishly before starting naturopathic school. In guac, each ingredient is whole, fresh and eaten raw, their ripe flavours mingling in the perfect taste bud-stimulating combination.  I remember a stiflingly hot afternoon, too hot to cook, sitting on the front veranda of my Cartagena, Colombia apartment, eating a cooling, soothingly filling guacamole snack.  It sure beat rice and beans…

This snack represents what health food should be: fresh, simple and a natural mingle of flavours.  Nature’s chemistry comes together to entertain, nurture and fuel. Ingredients are measured imprecisely, variably, depending on the size of the fruits in season, leaving each batch with a subtly different blend of flavours.  What could be more perfect than that?

The shear simplistic beauty of this snack became an inspiration for a quick, loosely painted rendition using acrylic, thickly and freely applied, on canvass board, created in my aunt’s Calgary home.

Perfect Guacamole:

2 ripe avocados: peel, mush and leave in one of the pits

juice from one fresh lemon

2 cloves of minced, raw garlic

1 tomato, cut into small pieces

1 pinch of salt

Mix well, dip rice crackers, chips or raw vegetables

Even Nonna loves it!