So much has happened. I went to Coachella and it was ahhhh-mazing!

You are probably thinking, Coachella, wow, aren’t you a little old for that? And the answer is no, well I hope not. You are never too old to go to a music festival and dance your heart out in a desert sand storm for 3 straight days. Right Grandpa?

Granted I came home looking tired and a few years older, it’s what’s inside that counts, and I came home feeling young!

Young and rebellious. Like I didn’t have to live according to societies rules anymore. I mean we make our own realities, right? Why couldn’t we just home school our kids in an RV while traveling from festival to festival? YOLO! (Mom- yolo stands for- you only live once:)

It took about a week for the Coachella aftershocks to wear off. And as the fog began to lift, it became perfectly clear that if I dragged my kids around to festivals they would grow up to be worse than Lindsey Lohan.

For the same reasons I explain to my children, if it was your birthday everyday it wouldn’t be special. Besides there is a certain beauty and security in the everyday life. I know there is, sometimes it’s just hard to feel.

So now it’s back to the basics. Going to the gym, parent-teacher conferences, packing lunch boxes, paying bills, sitting in a sweltering hot, swimming pool size petri-dish counting the minutes till gymnastics is over while a toddler repeatedly rams a toy truck into my leg. You know.

Thinking about getting back to the basics made me think a lot about Maui Flour Child. To be honest, it’s not all White Sauce Pizzettas and Red Wine Poached Pears around here. You can’t eat fancy food everyday nor can you go to Coachella every weekend. Boo.

So I thought I’d start a unit on my basic recipes. I mean, you know a lot about me, but you don’t even know my shredded chicken taco recipe yet. We have a lot to cover. Let’s begin with this fabulously simple Creamy Avocado Dip.

I love me a good chunky guacamole but this avocado dip is so versatile and flavorful that it has become a staple whenever I make Mexican food.  Don’t you think it would be yummy in a squeeze bottle and drizzled over this Tortilla Chip Crusted Shrimp? Or what if you made it a little thinner and tossed it with a edamame cucumber salad? I’m just thinking out loud here.  And getting very hungry.

Here’s what we will need:

2 ripe avocados

1 jalapeño (with the seeds, live a little)

1 clove garlic

a handful of cilantro

a generous pinch of kosher salt

some pepper

a dash of cumin

1 cup milk

Here’s what we are going to do:

Put music on loud. Put everything except the milk into the cusinart.

Turn it on and slowly add the milk until you get a nice creamy consistency. Not too thick, not too thin. Taste. Make sure there’s enough salt or else it will be bland, and that’s no way to live. Unless your doctor says… Since all avocados are not created equal, you be the judge of how much milk to add.

Get you bag of chips.

Creamy + Cool + Spicy= Ahhhh-mazing

 

353 Days till Coachella 2014,