Sorry - my aunt had a maid who pronounced avocado like that, emphasis on the do. And she pronounced consommé, consume. So I think of Irene when I do avoca-do. Guacamole was one of the first recipes I ever published for money, in an article for the old Leisureways magazine. It has a different name now, if it still exists. It was published by the Canadian Automobile Association. I forget why I put it in the article - word count, maybe? Anyway, here it is:

Crush 3 or 4 garlic cloves. (use the flat side of the broad end of a large knife, no need for a garlic crusher.) Peel them and mince. (I always remove the green stem thing inside, though no one ever told me to; I think it's bitter.) (I didn't say all this in my Leisureways article.) Drop the garlic pieces in your little chopper (electric?) and give them a whirl. Push the seeds out of a quartered tomato and add them. Maybe a pinch of salt and a drop of lemon juice to keep the avocado from going brown, plus some fresh cilantro. Put chunks of avocado into the chopper and chop it into the tomato-garlic mixture, as much as you see fit. Some people like almost a puree, others like to keep it chunky. Adorn with a sprig of cilantro on top for artistic effect and serve with chips or crackers. Any questions?

Did you know that recipes are very hard to write? Clarity is uppermost but I tend to add a little spice of humour when I can. Food is anthropomorphic; anyone knows that. It has human characteristics, usually malevolent. That's another discussion.

Recently I received a chain e-mail (chain mail?) requesting me to send along a recipe, preferably something tried and true that I could write down from memory, and also include a list of 10 or 20 addresses of people as recipients of a bounty of food ideas. I meant to. I know it's not that hard. Recipes are easy to come by. It's the addresses that are difficult, so much clerical work. So time has slipped by and I owe an apology to the friend who invited me to participate.

I hate chain letters, always have. So, in its time, did the Post Office - all that extra carrying for the poor, aching, over-burdened mailman . Now, I consider such proliferating requests to be a form of emotional blackmail (e-black e-mail?). At most, I will send a personal reply to the instigator and I should have done as much for this most recent one. I kept it on my open list for a while, because recipes are easy and my friend is a good cook. Ah well.

More recently, today, as a matter of fact, I read in the Sunday New York Times an interview with Ruth Reichl, former and last editor of the now defunct Gourmet magazine, who has just published a novel. She refers casually to her blog, that she says she pays no attention to, but she must do something with it, stir it a bit or keep it simmering on the back burner. She says it's about food. Of course. Why not? I mean, what else?

So, that nugget of information, that a blog can be about food, coupled with a niggling guilt that I hadn't complied with a friend's request for a recipe, led me to the thought that I might write a blog about food, once in a while. After all, I have published, among other things, three cookbooks. Being a writer who cooks and not a cook who writes, I had no professional help or a designated kitchen. I did all my own testing and most of the tasting. Any guests I had for meals during the gestation period of each book knew they were going to be my guinea pigs as I tried out recipes of my own devising on them. I encouraged them to comment and criticize, if necessary. It's an expensive way to write a cookbook, with all that food and all those guests. Celebrity cooks don't do it that way, I'm sure. And, like celebrities these days who are famous for being famous, famous cooks are famous first and cooks second. I don't mind. I have written elsewhere about the trials and hazards of taking a cookbook on the road, so to speak, of cooking in a bookstore or on the radio (I cooked something noisy). Both venues offer more than a soupçon of difficulty. Very work-intensive.

So, anyway, and well.... Tomorrow I will write a recipe. I'll think of something soon. Any requests?