Dreamy Creamy Avocado Cilantro Sauce

Early May. Sofia qualified for state in the 800. She also qualified for state in the 1600 but the 800 is her event now — she ran a 2:14 at the regional meet, which is the kind of time that gets a fourteen-year-old freshman noticed by college coaches, and which has now placed her in a different category entirely from where she was three months ago. The state meet is in two weeks. Sofia is preparing for it the way Sofia prepares for everything, which is to say with a calm that resembles stoicism but which I have come to understand as the absence of any need for external dramatization. She is just going to run the race. The race is the race. The training is the training. The result is the result. I have coached athletes for twenty-two years and I have never met another fourteen-year-old who held herself this still in the face of a big stage. It is going to take her far.

Marco came home from school Wednesday with a fever of one-oh-three. Strep. The pediatrician confirmed Thursday morning. Antibiotics, fluids, rest. Lisa had a shift Wednesday night. I took Marco to the doctor. I sat with him in the waiting room and held the bucket because he had thrown up twice on the way over. I held a ten-year-old's hair while he heaved into a metal bowl in a Kaiser exam room. He said, "I am sorry, Dad." I said, "Mijo, do not apologize. This is what dads are for." He said, "Dad, I am not a baby." I said, "I know you are not a baby. Holding the bucket is a job for a man, not a baby. The baby gets a bowl. The man gets a bucket." He laughed. He threw up again. I held the bucket.

Thursday I made chicken soup. Real chicken soup. The kind that takes four hours. Whole chicken, simmered for two hours with onion, garlic, carrot, celery, and a hand of cilantro. Strain. Pull the meat. Strain the broth again through cheesecloth into a clean pot. Re-add the meat. Add fresh vegetables — soft potato chunks, more carrots, fine-cut celery, a few corn rounds, more cilantro. Salt to taste. Squeeze of lime in each bowl. This is the soup my mother made me when I had strep at seven, and again at nine, and the time I had walking pneumonia at twelve, and every time I broke a bone or got a fever or got dumped by a girl in high school. There is no medical study I am aware of that confirms the healing power of a homemade chicken soup. There does not need to be a study. The data is in the stomach of every Mexican kid who has ever had a fever, which is to say, all of them, which is to say, the data is conclusive.

Marco had three bowls over the course of Thursday. Friday morning his fever broke. He sat on the couch and watched cartoons all day. By Saturday he was bouncing off the walls and Lisa had to confine him to the basement to keep him from infecting his sister, who, of course, came down with strep on Sunday morning. Round two. The pediatrician saw both of them in one visit Sunday afternoon. Antibiotics for Elena. The same chicken soup. The same lime. The same hands on the same head when she threw up in the same metal bowl. I have been a parent for seventeen years. I have done this rotation a hundred times. The bucket. The cool washcloth. The forehead. The story before bed. The slow, low conversation about whatever they are afraid of when they are sick, which is always something other than the sickness itself — always a fear of being left out, a fear of not being able to do the thing they were going to do that weekend, a fear of the universe not waiting for them. You have to listen for the actual fear. You have to address that one. The medicine treats the strep. The fathering treats the rest.

Sofia, meanwhile, was doing her speed work in the basement on the treadmill we had bought four years ago and which lives next to the laundry, because she did not want to risk catching strep from the twins and missing her state meet. She would run her workout, then go to her room, then come down for dinner and eat in the kitchen with a mask on while we ate in the dining room because the twins were sick. The whole house was a triage hospital for the week. Lisa was on day shifts, so she was actually less in the house than I was. I cooked. I cleaned. I did laundry. I drove to the pharmacy three times. I made chicken soup twice in one week, which is a personal record, and which I do not recommend.

Sunday night, after both twins had been bathed and sent to bed and Sofia had finished her speed workout and eaten dinner alone on the back patio in the May warmth, Lisa came home from her shift and we sat at the kitchen island. She was eating a bowl of the chicken soup, which she had been smelling for two days from the kitchen and had not gotten to eat yet. She said, "Carlos, this is unbelievable." I said, "Whose recipe." She said, "Your mother's." I said, "Mamá says hi." Lisa said, "How is she." I said, "Same as always. Yelling at Papá about the metformin. Roasting chiles in her head all year long. Asking when I am going to come home." Lisa said, "Are you ever going to go home." I said, "Eventually. Not yet. But eventually." Lisa said, "I know." She finished her soup. She kissed me. She went to bed.

I sat at the island a few minutes longer with the kitchen lights off and the patio lights still on through the window. Two sick kids. One state qualifier. One son committed to CSU. One wife who had just eaten a bowl of soup at midnight and gone to bed. One coach who was, all things considered, doing okay. The road bends. Feed your people. The game is won at the table. The game is also won in the bathroom holding the bucket, and at the pediatrician's office, and on the stove with a chicken in a pot.

By the time the week was over and both twins were back on their feet, I had gone through more cilantro than most people use in a year — bundle after bundle, tucked into the broth, stirred into the bowls, squeezed out with the lime. Cilantro is the herb that runs through every pot my mother ever put on the stove, and it is the one ingredient that, more than any other, smells like being taken care of. This avocado cilantro sauce is what happens when that herb gets to be the whole point — not a supporting character in a long braise, but the centerpiece. After a week of chicken soup and pharmacy runs and holding the bucket, Lisa deserved something green and bright and ready in five minutes. So did I.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 10 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems, loosely packed
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1 lime)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2–4 tablespoons water, to thin as needed
Pinch of cayenne or 1/2 jalapeño, seeded (optional, for heat)

Instructions

Combine. Add the avocados, cilantro, garlic, sour cream, lime juice, olive oil, salt, and cumin to a blender or food processor. Add jalapeño or cayenne if using.
Blend. Process on high until completely smooth, scraping down the sides once or twice, about 60 seconds.
Adjust consistency. With the blender running, add water one tablespoon at a time until the sauce reaches a pourable, spoonable consistency — thicker for dipping, thinner for drizzling over tacos, grilled chicken, or rice bowls.
Taste and season. Taste for salt, lime, and heat. Adjust as needed. The sauce should taste bright and herbaceous with a clean finish from the lime.
Serve or store. Serve immediately or transfer to an airtight container. Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the sauce before sealing to prevent browning. Refrigerate up to 3 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Dreamy Creamy Avocado Cilantro Sauce — The Herb That Lives in Every Pot My Mother Ever Made