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Monday, July 14, 2025

Weekly Round Up: Avocado Week

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week's meal planning came very easily thanks to a surplus of avocados, I finally found a TV show that meets the threshold of "good enough to keep watching", and I had a 😻😻😻 read.

Eats

As you know from last week's post, I made jello shots for our family July 4th party.  That was actually plan B.  Plan A was to make guac, so I had gotten six avocados only to have them not ripen in time for the party.  That quantity is perfect for a big bowl of party guac, but it's a bit of a tall order for a family of four to eat over a few nights.

However, we did it.  Here's how we used up our stash at the rate of two avocados per night:

Sunday: "Ultimate Chicken Sandwiches" which is my homemade version of a sandwich that Hubs likes to get at one of our favorite restaurants: Costco breaded chicken patty, cheese, avocado, lettuce, tomato, onion, and avocado.

Monday: salmon bowls, which are a ridiculously simplified version of this recipe.  I make the dressing as written except without the wasabi, and then I pile on rile, air fried salmon, Costco frozen stir fry veggies, and avocado.

Tuesday: my version of crunch wraps, discussed here.  This time I made a very simple nacho sauce, and I think it's worth doing if you have a few extra minutes, and just fine to substitute a sprinkle of cheese if you don't.


But wait, there's more!  We had a Water in the Basement Issue that led to Hubs and me spending most of the weekend on cleanup duty, which led to me being As Hungry As a Bear on Saturday night.  I know the geography is all over the place with this one, but last fall when I went to West Virginia I had something called a California burrito and that was exactly what I was in the mood for.  It's just a steak burrito with potatoes and guac, but I wanted a recipe for inspo.  Google took me to the most ridiculous YouTube video ever.  The video is 15 minutes long, and makes it seem like it only takes that long to marinate and grill steak, make french fries from scratch, and of course you need a torch to melt the cheese on your burrito.


Once I set aside all of the complicated steps, I saw the framework to get the burrito that I craving without all of the work.  Here is my version, with many cut corners.

  • I bought shaved steak that I quickly cooked on the stove and seasoned with taco seasoning.
  • Monterrey jack cheese, not melted with a torch.
  • The white sauce as shown in the video - dude I like garlic but three cloves is way too much, so I will step it down to one next time.
  • The green sauce as shown in the video.
  • I didn't bother to watch the section of the video where they made guac since I have a go-to guac recipe.  Specifically I just mash avocados with a little onion powder and salt.  BTW this was long after our avocado stash was gone, so if the grocery store had not had ripe avocados I would have skipped this whole project.
  • My stash of breakfast potatoes from the freezer in place of the french fries.  I have no objection to french fries in a burrito but the one that I had in WV had potatoes so that's what I wanted.
  • And obviously once I had everything wrapped up into a burrito I toasted the tortillas in a skillet for a little extra oomph.

Effort wise, this is something that I was willing to stop by the grocery store and whip up after a long day of soggy basement cleaning, and taste wise it was soothing after a long, hard day.

Workouts

Nothing out of the ordinary to report.

Watching

I wouldn't say that it's the best show ever, but Your Friends and Neighbors has been good enough to keep watching.  I'm five episodes in.  Jon Hamm plays Don Draper playing a wealthy man who is about to be unwealthy after losing his job so he starts robbing his upscale neighbors.


Reading

Last week I told you that I was reading a book called What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown, and I mentioned that I'd had mixed results with this author.  Thank goodness I didn't let that stop me, because it got off to a good start and kept getting better with every page.  It's about a 17 year old girl who has grown up with her father in a remote cabin out in the woods, and she is coming to suspect that there's something a little odd about her dad.  The story is set in the 90's and deals with one of the big news stories of the day (it's not really a spoiler but I think it's better for you to spend the same 0.5 seconds that I did pondering it instead of having me tell you), and deals with the early tech world, which for some reason I have great nostalgia for.  This was a winner all around - a story that kept me guessing, a main character that I was rooting for, and nostalgia galore.  I ate it up like catnip and found myself dropping the triple-cat's-heart-eyes for the rating, which is my highest book rating 😻😻😻 The only nit that I can pick is a frequent gripe on the Sarah's Bookshelves podcast show that the title isn't memorable and doesn't really fit the book.  Do I have another suggestion?  Um, you caught me.  No I do not so this is unconstructive criticism.

Currently: book club is coming up so it was time to start reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.  This book came out a few years ago and everyone loved it, but the reason that I passed on it at the time is that it's about an octopus.  I like octopi, but I tend to give any book about an animal a wide berth because if the author does it right, it's going to be very emotional, and probably in a heart breaking way.

RBC is indeed about an octopus, but he is a delightful octopus who won me over in the first few pages.  I have mixed feelings about the people in the story, and honestly I just want to read about the octopus and the main person that he interacts with.  I'll report back next week.

What would you do with a surplus of ripe avocados?

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