Grilled Avocado & Pico de Gallo: A Lazy Summer Entertaining Recipe

Confession time.

I hate cooking in the summer.

That’s right. There goes all my food blogger street cred. Perhaps I should rephrase that slightly and refine it to a more accurate statement.

The last thing I feel like doing in the summer is cooking.

There, that sounds a little better. To give you an idea of how much it’s the last thing I feel like doing here’s my list of the ” I’d rather be’s”  :

I’d Rather Be:

** takes a deep breath **

Gardening, swimming, lazing around at the beach, camping, geocaching,snuggling my kids, enjoying time with my family, weeding my garden beds, picking my vegetables, enjoying the sight of green grass and flowers, attending one of the copious festival that Edmonton has and sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows.

Phew.

Technically that last one counts as cooking, but I think you get my point.

However with all the above said, my family still needs to eat, we try to avoid fast food as much as possible and I don’t usually want to even leave my house to go out and sit in a restaurant, unless I am in dire need to air conditioning. Then we certainly go out for dinner.

The flip side to this coin is that I love summer food. Oh my lord, do I love summer food. Salads, veggies fresh from the garden, barbecued delights, food that sings and zings with flavor, dancing on your taste buds quite literally because it’s in season.

I also love, love LOVE having people over in the summer time, thus the reason why we are scrambling to get our deck done and start entertaining. That said, I’m not – nor will I ever be- the kind of person who has to make everything on the menu and spend the entire time cooking, fretting over the food and not actually visiting with people.  My get-togethers usually have a smattering of food from local producers or businesses – The Italian Centre and Irving Farms are two that I love – and a few items that I have made myself.

This is my kind of summer party food, baby. Easy, fast, tasty and it makes me look good. I mean, it’s just gosh darn purty.

It’ll give me back some of that street cred I lost by telling you that I don’t like cooking in the summertime.

All you need is fairly firm yet ripe avocados (one half for each person, so count accordingly), pico de gallo (homemade or other), cilantro and tortilla chips in the little bowl shape.

That my friends, is one heckuva cheater recipe list right there.

To Make:

Wash and slice your avocados in half, removing the pit carefully.

Walk over to your BBQ and turn it on high.

When the BBQ is hot, lay the avocados on the grill so they will have gorgeous grill marks across them like below. Grill for 4-5 minutes, watching carefully and checking after the first 3 minutes.

Remove the avocados when they have nice dark grill marks on them like below.

Fill the avocado with the pico de gallo and cilantro.

I love cilantro.

The cilantro below needs to be doubled for me.

For the best summer party appetizer yet, place in the middle of each guest plate and add several miniature bowl-shaped tortilla chips. You can use normal tortilla chips, but the bowl shapes are absolutely perfect for your guests to fill themselves and not make a huge mess.

If you want to make this gluten free, all you need is GF chips, how easy is that?

Dig your spoon into this gorgeous concoction, getting that smoky, charred avocado with each bite and filling up your little tortilla bowls.  Pop those beauties into your mouth and crunch away, they are a perfect bite size once filled up. Scoop out the avocado entirely, enjoying every last single decadent bite.

Then, if you are like my son, have another while your mom isn’t looking. Where that kid put it, I don’t know. I’m scared to see what he eats as a teenager.

So here is the start of my lazy summertime recipes even though it’s May in Alberta which means that we are getting snow any time now.

Those of you who don’t live here just shook your head and called me crazy.” Snow in May? Hogwash! “

Those of you who live here nodded vehemently in agreement and said,  “That’s why I haven’t put away the winter coats yet!”

I haven’t put away the winter coats yet.

May Long is coming, which means of course….

…Winter is coming.

Love,

Tell Me Where That Last Quote is From & I’ll Mail You a Cookie Magpie