The “Holy Guacamole” Guide to Trying Something New

Are you thinking about picking up a new activity, hobby, or skill? Before you do that, I’d like to suggest that you have a quick bite of guacamole first. Here is a super simple recipe for you:

Ingredients:
1 ripe avocado
lime juice
salt and pepper

Directions:
Mash all ingredients together.
Eat.

Mmm, delicious 🙂

Why am I sharing a super simple guacamole recipe? Because I wish someone had shared one with me a few years ago, when I tried to make guacamole for the first time…

Years ago, back when I still had a corporate job, my department was having some kind of a party, and everyone had to bring in a food item to share (ah, the glorious “office potluck”). For some reason, I decided to make “7 layer dip,” complete with home made guacamole.

You may be thinking, “ah, Avish must have decided that because he makes a killer guacamole!” That would make sense, but that was not the case. Not at all. I decided to make guacamole because I had never made it before and I figured, “hey, why not complicate my life?”

Having never made guacamole before, I turned to the one person I knew who could help me: my Mexican friend who loves to cook. Turns out, this was a mistake…

My buddy did in fact have a great recipe for guacamole. Unfortunately, it was an “authentic” recipe that had more steps to it than the pyramids of Chichen Itza.

There were tons of ingredients – all fresh! Many of the ingredients required special prep (more on that below). Some of the ingredients I had never purchased or used before, so I was flying in the dark.

The guacamole turned into a disaster. Suffice it to say, there were quite a few…ah…shall we say…technical problems making the guacamole. I can’t tell you how it tasted, because either:

1. I don’t remember because it was so long ago
2. My brain, in an attempt to protect myself, blocked all memory of the guacamole from my consciousness
3. The guacamole was so bad it instantly destroyed the taste buds it came in contact with

I don’t know; I’m going with “D. all of the above.”

I learned my lesson. Nowadays when I need to bring some kind of food to a pot luck type event, I volunteer to bring a bottle of wine or liquor. That keeps everyone happy. Especially me. For multiple reasons.

You may be wondering, “what does your “guacamolic ineptitude” (past ineptitude, I might add – I’ve gotten much better at it) have to do with me?”

Simple. We all will (or all should) try new things from time to time. There are very different ways to approach a new endeavor, and there are a few things you can learn from my failed guacamole experiment to make sure that you have much more success when you try something new:

Start Small

This, my friends, is a tomatillo

Having never made guacamole before, I have no idea why I jumped right in and started with a master chef’s level of complexity. My friend’s recipe required me to use tomatillos. He was very adamant on the superior quality of a tomatillo based guacamole. *sigh*

I swear to you, at that point in my life, I:

1. Had no idea what a tomatillo was
2. Had no idea how to properly select a tomatillo
3. Had no idea how to prepare a tomatillo

I assumed he meant “tomato” but was saying it with a heavy Mexican pronunciation (which would be odd, since he doesn’t have an accent). But no, I quickly learned that a tomatillo is not a tomato. It’s it’s own fruit, created by the devil to confound me (in my defense, my spell checker doesn’t seem to know what a “tomatillo” is either…).

My friend told me to “blanch the tomatillos in boiling water for two minutes, then shock them in cold water, then peel them.” Guess how many times in my life I had “blanched” something? That’s right: ZERO. To this point when someone said the word “blanche” I assumed they were talking about the Golden Girls.

Blanche, not blanche...

At this point I clearly should have aborted this plan, but lacking any semblance of common sense I pushed forward like Napoleon invading Russia: stubborn, stupid, and oblivious to my impending peril.

To this day, that is still the only time I have bought, prepared, and subsequently thrown away tomatillos.

I had never made guacamole before. If I had done nothing else but mash up an avocado and add some salt, pepper, and lime juice, things would have worked out just fine. But oh no, not me, I had to make super fancy guacamole with tomatillos.

Starting small is usually your best bet. I don’t want to discourage anyone from pushing themselves to do the most they can, but when you are trying something new it is usually a smart bet to minimize the number and complexity of the new variables you add to your process. This allows you to learn each step as you go while building positive momentum to keep you going.

Crawl before you walk. Walk before you run. Run before you fly. And you’re better off mastering unassisted human flight than you are making guacamole with tomatillos. Or maybe that’s just me.

Master the Basics First

First master your ABCs

Interestingly, the tomatillos were not the most confusing ingredient for me, nor were they the reason the guacamole failed. Oh no. My guacamole failed mostly because I had no concept what a ripe avocado felt like!

In my fruit buying history, which, admittedly, was limited, I had always been led to believe that “firm=good.” Mushy fruit meant overripe fruit. So, when I went to buy avocados I picked up the ones that were firm to the touch; the ones that when I pushed in with my thumb did not give at all.

For you people who are avocado novices, let me tell you, this is a recipe for disaster (ha! get it? “*recipe* for disaster” while talking about a guacamole recipe? That’s right folks, I’m a professional humorist and comedian. I’ll be here all week, and please, tip the wait staff well…) A perfect avocado gives a little when you push on it. If it doesn’t give, it isn’t ripe enough.

Not knowing this, I tried to make my guacamole with an under-ripe avocado, and this did not work at all. If you’ve never attempted to mash up an under-ripe avocado, let me tell you, it’s hard! It’s like trying to make whipped cream out of wood chips; it’s just not happening. Having never done this before, I assumed I just needed to “try harder,” so I kept mashing longer than any normal intelligent human being (or most chimpanzees) would have.

The lesson here is that I had a master chef’s recipe for guacamole, but I didn’t even know how to pick a good avocado.

In the same way, before you start going crazy about learning the advanced techniques for what you are doing, master the basics first. Remember, crawl, then walk, then run, then fly (then try tomatillos).

(There’s also a side lesson here about “working smart vs. working hard,” but I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself)

Consider the Source of Your Advice

Sure, his food might be good, but is this the guy you want to go to for advice?

My buddy is a great cook, and he loves complicated, involved, “from scratch” recipes. And that works for him (believe me, I know; I have benefited from his cooking before).

As for me, I actually enjoy cooking, and I like to make stuff from scratch, but I also have no problem throwing a jar of Prego into a pan with some pre-packaged frozen meatballs and calling that dinner (sorry, I know some of you die-hard, “My sauce so authentic I always make it from scratch and call it ‘gravy'” people just popped a synapse reading that). I don’t need my recipes to read like the U.S. tax code. Short and simple is fine with me.

I should have considered this when I went to him for cooking advice. Of course he was going to give me the “best most authentic” recipe, which translates in Avish language to, “unnecessarily long and complicated for my purposes.”

Let me be clear: my friend was not wrong at all. I’m sure if I was more experienced the guacamole would have turned out great. His food is always awesome. The fault was mine, for not considering three things:

• The source of the advice
• My goals
• How those two things fit together

Often when you are trying something new, you seek out the most knowledgeable person on the topic. That’s smart, because they are clearly the experts. However, I have found that sometimes top experts give you advice from their perspective, not yours. They may share with you the absolute best way to do something, as opposed to the way that is best for you. There’s a big difference there.

Be sure to carefully consider all advice you get (instead of blindly accepting it), understand the perspective, and then determine whether that advice makes sense for you.

Remember, regardless of who gives you advice, only you are responsible for your own success…

In the end, my “7 layer dip” became a “6 layer dip,” it tasted fine, and I ended up with a funny story to share at work. No harm, no foul. However, in many other situations when we try something new we set ourselves back (or worse, make our lives so hard we give up altogether) by jumping in too far too fast. I am all for going whole hog on a new activity, but consider the three steps above to make sure you don’t make your own life harder than it has to be.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get dressed for a fun day of tomatillo picking…

***
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By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+

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