Tomato Salad-Stuffed Avocados

October. The kimchi crocks fermenting hard. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 2, on a step stool stirring miso into broth. She knows the order. She is bilingual already in food vocabulary. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Galbi on the grill Saturday. Marinated short ribs. The Korean barbecue Saturday standard.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

James fell asleep on the couch with the kids climbing on him. The household was the household.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

David showed up Sunday with a paper bag of tomatoes from the Bellevue garden — still warm, a little dusty, the kind of tomatoes that make you feel like someone thought of you. I had avocados on the counter and not much else planned, and that was enough. This recipe is what I make when the produce does the work and I don’t want to fight it: no heat, no fuss, just a bowl and a knife and something that tastes like it took effort because the ingredients were honest.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 large ripe avocados, halved and pitted
2 cups cherry or garden tomatoes, quartered
1/4 small red onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons fresh basil, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Flaky sea salt, for finishing (optional)

Instructions

Prepare the avocados. Halve and pit each avocado. Using a spoon, scoop out a small amount of flesh from the center of each half to widen the cavity. Dice the scooped flesh and transfer to a mixing bowl. Set the avocado shells aside on a serving plate.
Build the tomato salad. Add the quartered tomatoes, diced red onion, and basil to the bowl with the diced avocado. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Season with kosher salt and black pepper and toss gently, being careful not to mash the avocado pieces.
Taste and adjust. Let the salad sit for two to three minutes so the tomatoes release a little juice. Taste and adjust salt, lemon, or olive oil as needed.
Fill and serve. Spoon the tomato salad generously into each avocado half, mounding it slightly. Finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt if using. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Tomato Salad-Stuffed Avocados — David’s Garden Tomatoes, Sunday Dinner, and the Gift of Simple Things