Avocado Salsa — Something Cold and Bright and Alive

August approaches and the writing continues — the morning practice, the journal filling, the fragments assembling into something that is starting to look like chapters. I am writing about Irving this week — my father, the presser, the quiet man who came home every evening and kissed my mother and sat down for dinner. The writing about Irving is harder than the writing about Sylvia, because Irving was silent and silence is harder to write than speech, because writing requires words and Irving's language was not words, it was presence — the presence of a man who sat at the table every night and the sitting was the statement and the statement was: I am here. I will always be here. This is what I do. The writing about Irving is the writing about Marvin, I realize, as I write. Both men said little. Both men loved enormously. Both men are defined by their constancy, by the showing up, by the daily, unremarkable, extraordinary act of being there. Irving died. Marvin is dying — not in the medical sense, not imminently, but in the sense that the Marvin I married is dying, synapse by synapse, memory by memory, and the dying is slow and the showing up is all that remains.

The tomatoes are ripe. I made a gazpacho — the cold soup, the summer soup, the soup that requires no cooking, which is Carmen's legacy and which I make every August and which tastes like the sun and the garden and the hands that grew the tomatoes and picked them and held them and pressed them into a soup that is cold and bright and alive. The gazpacho is alive. The garden is alive. The writing is alive. I am alive. Everything that matters is alive. I am holding on to this fact with both hands.

The gazpacho was Carmen’s, and it is mine now, and I will not share it here because some recipes belong to the dead and the living who carry them. But this salsa — this bright, uncooked thing of avocado and tomato and lime — lives in the same family of food that asks nothing of the stove, that wants only ripe things and a knife and hands willing to do the pressing and the chopping. It is August food. It is alive food. It is the food you make when the garden is giving you more than you can hold.

Avocado Salsa

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 3 ripe avocados, peeled, pitted, and diced
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 1/2 cup red onion, finely diced
• 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
• 3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

1. Prepare the avocados. Halve each avocado, remove the pit, and scoop the flesh into a medium bowl. Cut into 1/2-inch pieces, keeping some chunks intact for texture.
2. Combine the vegetables. Add the quartered cherry tomatoes, diced red onion, minced jalapeño, and minced garlic to the bowl with the avocado.
3. Season and dress. Drizzle the lime juice and olive oil over the mixture. Sprinkle with salt, cumin, and black pepper. Add the chopped cilantro.
4. Toss gently. Using a large spoon or spatula, fold everything together carefully so the avocado holds its shape. Taste and adjust salt and lime as needed.
5. Rest and serve. Let the salsa sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Serve with tortilla chips, alongside grilled fish, or spooned over anything that needs something cold and bright.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 180 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 15g | Carbs: 11g | Fiber: 7g | Sodium: 200mg