A Recipe for Joy

This may be a slightly misleading title. Decide for yourself after reading this post and the recipe itself.

The title refers to a recipe especially developed for Ms. Joy T. She was our HR manager in London MOO offices up until she moved backed to the US in February. It was a sad, joyless day when she left. (we love our puns at MOO).

As a going away present we all contributed (except me) our favourite recipe for Joy's cook book. Now if you know me, you will understand why that has taken a few months for me to complete. I just don't cook and I wasn't about to put a recipe in there for peanut butter and banana toast. Also, when I do attempt to cook I follow the recipe to every last pinch of salt. I never stray as I'm worried what will happen if I do. I couldn't very well plagiarize a recipe for dear Joy.

Now, a funny thing happened on Saturday....

J and I decided to have Nick (J's cousin) and Mark (our Filmmaker/Musician friend - also Canadian) over for a BBQ. It was forecast to be nice weather and I was keen to eat outside. I was in charge of the table and ambiance (I think I did quite well on that front). You'll see I kept it low key but funky with our map placements, chinese lanterns and cool new coasters brought to me from Boris of Prague.

I realized while J had a perfect meal we needed some low key appies. After looking through the aforementioned cook books I found what looked like a good recipe for guacamole.

Now, what happened next was created completely by accident. I soon realized we were missing a few key ingredients so I improvised. The results were scrumptious and I declared I had a recipe for Joy! All of you (my millions of readers) can try it out here but Joy you'll get it printed and ready to insert in your MOO cookbook when I come to Providence next month.

Sweet Joy Guacamole*
2-3 avocadoes (make sure they are ripe)
2 tomatoes seeded and diced
2 crushed cloves of garlic
1/2 red onion - chopped finely
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp fresh cilantro or coriander (depending on what continent you live in)
2-3 drops of Tabasco sauce
2 tbsps Mandarin Yogurt**
pinch of salt and pepper

*Joy is one of the sunniest people I have encountered so I think it is fitting this guacamole is actually sweet
**The mandarin yogurt add the sweetness and creaminess to the guacamole

Basically you crush/mush up the avocadoes, then add the garlic, onion and tomatoes. Stir in the Yoghurt, the tobasco, cilantro and a bit of salt and pepper. Yum Yum Yum. This is really a sweet spin on typical guacamole. EnJOY!

Ooooooo soooo good.You can see from Nick's face how enjoyable the guac is.

The guac was a sweet start to an all and all enjoyable evening. Here are a few more photos from the evening on my flickr account.