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What makes a good guacamole? You know it almost as soon as you see it. It’s fresh, vibrant and green. There’s no hint of stale brownness to it yet. Chunks of fresh avocado are mixed into a creamy base with an unmistakable seasoning that makes it so good.

A great guacamole is worth traveling for. It’s worth searching out the perfect restaurant. It’s worth waiting for. What makes a particular guacamole so good? Let’s go over what goes into making some of Sorrento Valley’s Best Guacamole.

Use Only Fresh Ingredients
The best guacamole starts with the freshest ingredients. Avocados need to be at their peak stage of ripeness to show off to their best advantage, and so do the other ingredients. The start of a truly great guacamole will always be fresh, high-quality ingredients.

Common ingredients for guacamole include:
• Avocados
• Onions
• Salt
• Tomatoes
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Lime
• Garlic
• Cilantro

Whether these ingredients are in your particular guacamole depends on you! Try different seasonings or omitting something (besides the all important avocado of course) to see if you like the flavor better.

Pro tip: If you’re planning to make your own guacamole, don’t try to get the avocados the same day. There’s no guarantee what is on store shelves will be ripe that day. There is nothing worse than having guacamole on the brain, only to discover all the avocados at the store are rocks.
If you get them the day before and they are still very firm, you can ripen them a little faster by putting them in a brown paper sack. The brown paper sack traps ripening gases the avocado releases near the avocado, helping them to ripen faster. Do not put them in a plastic bag, although it will still trap gases, it will also trap moisture. This can lead to mold.

Try Variations
While the above ingredients are the most common, there are dozens of variations out there. True authentic Mexican cuisine is filled with different guacamole variations, and simply because it has fruit in it or a different kind of pepper does not mean it isn’t an authentic recipe.
It’s worth trying several different varieties of guacamole and experimenting to see if there’s something you find truly delicious.

Leave Some Chunks
Texture is an important part of guacamole. If it’s all blended down into a fine paste, there’s no way to experience the nuances of its flavor. Guacamole should be mixed until blended but still fairly chunky. It shouldn’t be a fine, completely lump-free paste.

It takes a bit of balance to figure out what is blended enough without being too blended, but it’s worth experimenting on it.

Compare to a Professional
It’s no secret that we love a good guacamole. We take pride in making each and every bowl of our own in-house guacamole as delicious as possible. If you’re trying to create your own unique flavor—or just experience one of the best guacamoles out there, come down and try our own personal take on guacamole.

The Mediterranean is a diverse region filled with people with a passion for food. Over the course of thousands of years, they have crafted unique and flavorful foods that are both healthy and delicious. There’s more to Mediterranean cuisine than just the food though.

Mediterranean cuisine also centers around a series of customs that are associated with their food. It’s not just eating, it’s a way of eating—and studies show the way people in the Mediterranean eat may have an impact on how long they live. In this article we will take a look at three of those additional habits.

They Eat Together
Mediterranean food isn’t meant to be eaten alone. Eating together is a big part of the culture, and studies show that it may have benefits beyond the nutrition of the food. Teenagers that regularly eat meals with their parents have better overall eating habits.

People who eat together also feel less lonely, and often have fewer incidents of depression. That means eating together makes you feel better.

There’s something about sitting down with family to catch up, talk about your problems, or laugh over a shared joke. Only about 30% of people share at least one meal a day with their family. By bringing this number up we can make the world a happier, healthier place.

If You Do Have To Eat Alone, Do It Right
When you’re home alone, what do you eat? Most likely, it’s pretty boring. You might scrape together some cheese and crackers or microwave a TV dinner. Why go to all the trouble to prepare a meal if you’re the only one who is going to eat it?

The healthiest food is fresh though, and Mediterranean people know this. When they eat by themselves, it’s often just as rich and healthy as if they were cooking for the whole family.

Although it might seem like a waste of time to put out the good China just for yourself, it’s worth doing. Valuing yourself is a critical step in making sure you eat right every day—and also that you feel worthy.

Take Time to Live
Americans have a very fast paced culture, and work is a big part of that. In the Mediterranean, this way of living is reversed. Mediterranean people work to live, not the other way around. This can have a huge, positive impact on health if Americans choose to adopt this too.

When work is over, let it be over. Relax and enjoy your food, enjoy an evening out, enjoy a great sunset. Life is worth living, and Mediterranean people make sure everything from their meals to their weekends are relaxing and enjoyable.

The Mediterranean developed so many great dishes because of how passionate the people there are about food. It’s possible to adopt this way of living wherever you are, by taking time to slow down, relax, and enjoy your life.
Mediterranean food is beautiful not just because of the flavors, because of the care and passion that went into that meal from farm to table.

Olives are one of the most important ingredients in Mediterranean cuisine. They’re pressed into the olive oil, used as a garnish, and showcased all on their own as well. This mighty ingredient is packed with flavor and nutritional power, but it didn’t get that way all on its own. Here’s how your olive gets to you from grove to plate.

The Harvest
A quality harvest starts with a quality tree. Olives are grown on olive trees. Olive trees are tropical, and require warm temperatures, dry temperatures, and cool but not cold winters. This means olive trees can’t be grown just anywhere.

Turkey, Spain, Italy, Morocco and Greece are currently the top producers in olives, in part because their climate is perfect for the Olive tree.
It takes about three years for a new olive tree to bear fruit. Some cultivars can take as long as 12 years though! Once the olive tree is ready to produce, it’s time to harvest.
Even in commercial olive orchards, olive picking is largely done by hand. Harvestors may use some machinery, such as a vibrating tong to shake the olives off the tree, but plenty of handwork is still done.

Curing the Olives
One the olives are picked, they have to be cured before they are ready for the next step in the process. Olives straight off the tree are very bitter. They’re not something you’d really want to eat. One method of doing this is to soak them in a brine. This leeches out the bitter flavor so just the deliciousness of the olive is left behind.
Olive oil is made from fresh olives, and you can still taste that with the note of bitterness in the oil. If olive oil doesn’t have any bitterness, chances are it’s not fresh anymore.

Shipping
Once the olives have been processed, either by pressing them into oil or brining to remove bitterness, they can be bottled, canned or jarred into their final home. Once they are preserved, they are ready to be shipped around the world to the restaurant or grocery store.
Olives often need to travel quite far to get to places that don’t have olive trees, but luckily preparations such as canning, jarring and being made into oil allow olives to be shipped easily.

Olive Appreciation
It takes a lot of work to prepare olives. Waiting for the tree to grow, handpicking the resulting olives, pressing them into olive oil. Without the help of people who grow these olives, we could never appreciate them elsewhere in the world.
Luckily, olive growers are passionate about their work, and about the delicious fruit of the olive tree. Thanks to their hardwork, we can enjoy olives all over the world.
The next time you bite into an olive cured in oil, or enjoy a dip made with an olive oil base, think about the olive tree it came from. Your delicious meal started out on a tree, growing in the gentle breeze of a Mediterranean field, and had a long journey to get to your plate.