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I find storing the avocados in the fridge causes them to brown without really ripening. I usually buy a bag of 5 and try to eat them over a 3 or 4 day period starting when the first one ripens. Fresh Direct also sells packs of 2 ripe avocados. So you can buy 2 ripe avocados and a bag of hard avocados, eat the ripe ones, and then the hard ones should be ripe enough to eat.

My avocado tree usually drops a dozen or two avocados a week for most of the year, so I've had a lot of time and examples to experiment on for storage.

Once they're off the tree, ripen at room temperature for about a week. Then transfer into the fridge in an airtight container, they usually last in the fridge for another 2 weeks.

Doing fridge first means they never ripen and just dry out before softening.

I would trade my third child for your avocado tree.

Hmmm, we've got a massive fig tree that produces > 4kg a day for over a month each year and a mango tree that's similarly exuberant.

Sadly we're not in the child trade for tree game :-(

Lucky! Figs are great for creating homemade energy/protein/w.e bars as the binder and mangos are great frozen as pulp for mango lassi.

What about grandparents? Are you all set on grandparents? In-laws?

We trade figs for lamb, we make glace figs for the year, we make fig jam, the staff from the local patisserie raid the tree a few times and we get half price curry pies for the rest of the year ..

The mangoes trade pretty damn well. (Not our mango tree - but same age and same rough geographic location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgBgQQXoUw8 )

My father planted the tree (he was born in 1935) and does most of the bulk cooking | prep here still; he's a great grand parent, I'm a grand parent ... we're doing pretty good on extended family, thank you for the implied offer of surplus humans but they tend to be for life and not just for christmas.

Keep them in a bag with a banana and soon your problem child will be like the older two.

My aunt has an avocado tree. Freshly-picked avocados ripen very differently than store-bought ones. They stay ripe for way longer, since they don't have to be picked in advance and shipped. And I say this as someone who lives in CA, where we get produce on the fresher side, in general.

When I visited my aunt she gave us several avocados, and I thought, "we're never going to be able to eat these before they go bad". I was so wrong — they stayed perfect for well over a week.

"They stay ripe for way longer, since they don't have to be picked in advance and shipped"

... and since they are treated with all kinds of chemicals who mess with the ripening.

Which kinds of chemicals? Why multiple?

Or are they used for other purposes but affect ripening?

I am not an expert for avocados, but I suspect that they do the same as with most fruits (I worked in fruitpicking while backpacking):

apart from herbicides, fungicide and pesticides, there are chemicals to block the ripening while the fruit is still on the tree, because you want to harvest all fruits at once. And then you do various things for packaging.

And there were likely other purposes as well, I have forgotten now. All in all, lots of them were used, way more than I expected. So much, that I prefer organic.

Do you water it with unicorn tears? How did you get it to produce all year round? That's unheard of.

I think it's the cooler coastal climate I'm in that slows down the growth so the regular 3 month harvest period is spread across 9.

It still only flowers once a year in spring like a normal tree, but by that following winter (regular harvest time), only the clusters with few siblings would have grown large enough for harvest. Then it flowers again, and then bigger family clusters reach maturity in the summer/fall.

My avocado tree when I lived in a much hotter climate would drop all the fruit as soon as it started getting hot (they would dry out and wither on the tree).

Out of curiosity, in which climate zone are you living?

Factorio-like diagrams of the ripening process would be great to put in your book and likely resonate well with your readership.

Well, avocados are good if you need more iron.

The avocados must grow!

And if you wanna drain a lot of water with what you are eating. A single avocado needs 70 liters to grow, a magnitude more than a tomato.

Depending on where that farming is being done that might already be an issue.

An avocado also has an order of magnitude more nutritional value. Tomatoes are 95% water with little to show for the other 5%. Avocados have significantly more carbs, fat, and nutrients.

If concerned about water it might be a good idea to start with meat. A pound of beef needing about 7000 liters.

I eat meat once a month max, so I got that front covered already I guess.

I agree. The American cuisine suggests meat daily, sometimes even multiple times per day.

Reducing this to a few days a week for enough people could make a huge difference.

Meat is extremely nutritious. And isn't 7000 L of water but of virtual water. This concept is meaningless as it is for decision making. It's way more complex than that.

I'm in the UK. Unfortunately we don't grow avocados, but we do have the water for it.

Hopefully in a few years we can buy the Factorio fridge: https://xkcd.com/1109/

> My memoirs will include all my food storage tips for the perpetually single.

Why wait? Become a famous author now. :P

Which might also help with the perpetually single part

And risk rendering all these single-person food storage techniques useless?!

> And for storing a cut avocado

I just put a thin layer of olive oil on a plate, then put it cut side down on the plate.

Or lime juice

Yes, my method too. I'm a little disappointed the article did not mention this.

Since lime juice is an ingredient in my guac, that's handled and I don't have problems with the guac discoloring unless kept too long.

It does mention it, but later explains why they prefer plastic wrap.

Personally I use lemon juice -- not only does it chemically prevent the browning (yay chemistry) but it also makes it taste better.

>The old rub-with-oil-and-place-face-down-on-an-oiled-plate works fine if you've

>got a perfect half of an avocado with a smooth face, but it doesn't help if

>you've got, say, 3/4 or 1/4 of an avocado.

How exactly do you get half of an avocado with a flat face? Slice through the pit like a cyborg?

To save half an avocado for later in the day, I just leave the half with the pit sitting face up. Then later I scrape the tiniest layer of brown off.

Perhaps I can describe my process.

Remove the hard bit where the stem attaches (if present.)

With a sharp knife slice into the avocado until you hit the pit.

Rotate the Avocado to slice around the pit until you get back to the starting point (and remove the knife.)

Twist the two halves to separate them. The pit will stick in one half.

Chop the pit with the knife (but not enough to cut it in half!) Twist to remove the pit.

Or just search Youtube for "pit avocado Martha Stewart" who demonstrates this better than I can explain it in about 15s.

I've seen the technique of using the knife to rotate the pit, but I don't really do it because I'm generally happy with radial pieces so cutting the pit half into quarters isn't a problem. I also just generally have one avocado at a time, so I'm not going for speed (as one would say making guac).

But my point was that unless you actually slice the pit in half, neither half is going to have a flat face that you can put on a plate of oil or whatever. Rather one half is going to have the pit sticking out, and the other half is going to have a pit shaped indentation that doesn't touch the oil.

I guess the indentation only interacts with the little oxygen that is trapped there, which might not be enough to substantially brown it.

Inexpensive avocado prep tools have a triple knife point that grabs the pit, main serrated knife for cutting, and grill area for slicing into slabs.