National Guacamole Day on September 16 brings fresh flavors together for the perfect celebration.
- Originating with the Aztecs in Mexico, guacamole is an avocado-based sauce that has become popular in American cuisine as a dip, condiment, and salad ingredient.
- Guacamole is Aztec for “Avocado Sauce”, the original recipe calling for crushed avocado, tomatoes and salt.
- Avocados are native to Central and South America.
- They have been cultivated for over 10,000 years.
- Another name for the avocado is the “alligator pear.”
- The Aztec word for avocado was ahuacatl, which means “testicle tree”.
- Spanish explorers could not pronounce ahuacatl, so they called the avocado, “aguacate.” This is the origin of the word guacamole.
- In many South American countries, children rise on Easter to search for avocados hidden by Senor Bernardo, the happy winged cat
- Over 53 Million pounds of Avocado will be consumed on Superbowl Sunday.
- The Apollo 11 astronauts brought guacamole to space with them! However, they did not eat it, since, according to Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, “that pig Buzz Aldrin ate all the chips before we even left earth.”
- Avocado competes with buffalo wings and pizza as The Superbowl Food, thanks to a successful marketing campaign by avocado growers over the past 2 decades.
- Avocados are a unique fruit. They have a high fat content, but this is “good” fat – monounsaturated fat.
- A whole avocado contains 200-300 calories and is a good source of vitamin A, C, E, and B vitamins, as well as fiber and potassium.
- The Hass avocado is the most popular varietal of avocado and is named after postal worker Rudolph Hass, who purchased the seedling in 1926 from a California farmer and patented it in 1935
- Mantequilla de pobre (Spanish for “poor-man’s butter”) is a mixture of avocado, tomato, oil, and citrus juice.
- Salat avocado is a rural Israeli avocado salad, with lemon juice and chopped scallions (spring onions) with salt and black pepper added, was introduced by farmers who planted avocado trees on the coastal plain in the 1920s. Avocados have since become a winter delicacy and are cut into salads as well as being spread on bread today also with pita and flatbread.
- Around 3 million photos are posted of avocados and guacamole each day on Instagram.
- In response to the New York Times publishing a recipe for guacamole that includes peas, President Barack Obama tweeted “Respect the nyt, but not buying peas in guac. onions, garlic, hot peppers. classic.”
- Musician Jack White’s recipe for guacamole, which was included as part of his contract for performing at the University of Oklahoma in 2015, was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request from the university.
- California is known as the ‘King of Avocado’ in the United States and accounts for over 90% of avocado production in the country
- Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest food consumption day, behind Thanksgiving.
- Guacamole is THE football party super-food. Of the 1 billion pounds of avocados sold in the US in 2007, 49.5 million pounds were consumed on Super Bowl Sunday!!
- The avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable.
- Football fans across the country will eat more than 80 million pounds of avocados, or roughly enough to bury the University of Phoenix Stadium field under 31 feet of the wrinkly skinned fruit, end zone to end zone.
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