I'm all about that avocado.

No, for real, I might even be a little obsessed.

Avocados are yummy, good for you, easy to make fun recipes with.

What's not to love about them?
(Unless you're allergic, in which case, I am very sorry.)




I bought a bag of avocados at Costco two weeks ago. Then I checked them last Sunday and all but one had ripened at the same time! Well, I love avocados, but that's quite a bit to eat in a few days if I didn't want them to go bad.

Therefore, I went to Pinterest to find recipes using avocados. There were some expected recipes, some interesting ones, and some that were completely ingenious. I realized that I had nowhere close to enough avocados to make all the recipes that I wanted to try, so I will just need to keep buying avocados in the future.

But here are some of the recipes that I tried, with pictures, of course!

Avocado, Bacon, and Cheese {ABC} Puffs

Now this just sounds fantastic, right? Combining creamy avocado with crispy bacon and delicious cheese? Unfortunately, I did not have any bacon, because if I bought the stuff I would just end up eating it, and I try to avoid that situation.

So, my puffs were just avocado and cheese, but they were still super yummy.

These morsels of savory goodness were super easy. I used one of my mini cupcake pans to hold the shape (and was therefore able to cook them in my toaster oven, which I use whenever possible).

I cut crescent roll triangles in half, and pressed them into the cupcake indents. Then I took cubed (or rectangled is more accurate, I suppose) avocado and cheese, and just layered them in. I picked up the overhanging bits of crescent roll and pinched them together at the top. 

Including the 10 minutes to cook at 375, this recipe probably took about 15 minutes altogether. Not too shabby if you're pressed for time or if hunger catches you by surprise.

Guacamole Grilled Cheese

Now, putting avocado on sandwiches shouldn't be a new concept for you. I particularly enjoy avocado slices on hamburgers  and clubs. But this slightly different recipe combines the richness of avocado with the classic grilled cheese sandwich.

Now, I didn't have all the ingredients the recipe called to be added to the mashed avocado. I had the fresh onion and garlic, as well as salt and pepper, of course, but not the tomato or cilantro or jalapenos (which I would never add anyhow). I compromised by adding a tiny bit of salsa.

Making the grilled cheese was pretty straightforward. Heated up a skillet, put butter on the side of bread touching the hot surface, layered on the cheese and avocado mush, put on another piece of bread, flipped the whole monster after a few minutes, and I was done! 

Now, I could have used my faithful toaster oven, but with how much of the guacamole I put on, there probably would have been an explosion or some other kind of mess. 

This is an easy, yummy, twist on a comfort food.

Although, if we're talking about simplistic, comfort food, why not just eat straight guacamole?

All you need are some chunks of avocado, some salsa, and a bag of chips.

Now, I know I'm kind've cheating by using store bought salsa, but if we're talking about saving time, as long as you have fresh avocado, it will still taste great.

Step 1. Mash up the avocado.

Step 2. Add salsa.

Step 3. Mix.

Step 4. Eat guacamole with chips.

Step 5. Be happy (and eat more guacamole with chips).

The brownish-green goop may not look so appetizing at first glance, but once you start eating it, there's no going back. It takes about 3-5 minutes to make a delicious (and mostly healthy) snack. Whether you have the guacamole just to color your favorite chips or use your chips to scoop up giant mouthfuls of guacamole, this is a perfect way to feed your stomach while pleasing your tastebuds.

If you're interested in some of the other avocado recipes I found, they will be in my "recipes to try" board on Pinterest. Go check them out. :)


Trying to decide what avocado combination to use next,

The Purple Writer

Am I a 'Gleek?'

I watched the [final] finale of Glee this weekend. Like many other people, I started watching Glee because I heard about it all the time, and stayed through all the drama and plot holes for the music.

Glee is a show full of fun music and drama-loving characters in the glee club at  William McKinley High School. There are tears, love triangles, and halls filled with vocally-gifted, angsty teenagers.

Glee was a show I watched when I was bored, or wanted to pass a couple hours. I never thought of it with any particular fondness or attachment. But looking back at it, Glee actually did make an impact on my life. Specifically, there was the time when Cory Monteith died.

I've always been awful at knowing and recognizing celebrities, and I can only remember the real-life names of maybe 10 of my favorite actors (most of them BBC actors, of course). But I remember checking out of a grocery store in July 2013 and seeing magazines with Finn Hudson's face and headlines about his death. Well, the death of the actor who played him, Cory Monteith.

When the fifth season aired that Fall, and Finn was in one episode and then not the next, it hit me. He was dead. I had watched several shows up to that point in time, and gone through multiple para-social breakups with characters who were written off those said shows. But this time I knew that the death of a character I liked was because of the death of an actual person, who had his own dreams, skills and overall potential.

That gave me a change in perspective about the relationship between characters and actors, and my own para-social relationships with those individuals.

But to get back to the show Glee itself, I have not liked the most recent season(s).

First off, the show is about a glee club in high school, but then it started following key members of the glee club after they graduated and moved to New York and their college and careers. It was a little strange, but there was still plenty of singing and dancing, so I decided to suffer through the 'college phase,' and kept watching Glee, if you want to call it that. (In general, I would forget to watch it for a month or two, then catch up when I was bored, as opposed to my actively watching shows as soon as they came online each week.)

Season Five should have been the end of Glee, or so I think. It had a lot of unnecessary, post-high school drama, but it seemed to end on a good note. Everything was tied up with a bow: a little breaking of the 4th wall and some snappy musical numbers.

But then, I was surprised when I found out there were new Glee episodes to watch. A sixth season was airing!
This sixth season essentially ripped open our finally-scabbed over cuts that come with the end of a show, and yanked us back into the Glee universe. There was more painful drama, a worse plot (if possible), and in general I think the sixth season should not exist. I have not heard a single person say they loved that Glee was back, or were so excited for each new episode to come out. Not a single person.

The only good thing to come out of season six was the two-part finale. They took the time to really wrap everything up, tell us where the characters were heading, and end for good. This time, there should be no new-season-that-breaks-every-promise-made-in-the-previous-finale or questions about whether or not the show actually ended. This finale was beautiful, made me cry, and is the end of a show to which I gave a good portion of my time.

There may be a lot of hate towards Glee, but it was a fun and very colorful show. I am glad I watched it, but I am also glad there will be no more.

Off to watch other shows,

The Purple Writer

I have a job now.

Well, it's really an internship, but I get paid for my 20 hours a week, which is more than I expected for my first internship.

Beginning this February, I have been a Social Media Intern with the Office of Communications & Marketing at Texas Tech University. (Not the College of Media & Communication, although it seems many people make that mistake when looking up phone numbers.)


I get paid minimum wage, but this is basically my dream internship:
-> I am getting experience in managing social media accounts, which is what I would like to do in the long run.
-> I have a great boss and coworkers.
-> I sit next to the window in our office (a small room with three desks for us social media interns), and although it is very dirty, it has a gorgeous view looking out over Memorial Circle.
-> I enjoy what I do (writing tweets and posts, finding content, monitoring our streams and feeds, analyzing and comparing our stats with the universities we 'compete' with in the social media world of follows and interactions, and so on).

If nothing else, you should probably be jealous of this window that I sit next to for 20 hours each week. Lubbock has its dusty days and not-so-pretty days, but the campus is well-maintained, and the sky is almost always a beautiful sight. 

Mostly because West Texas is so flat in general, we get a lot of sky. A normally 'pretty' sight of clouds or color is simply transformed out here. You'll know what I mean if you ever see one of our gorgeous Lubbock sunsets. 

It's Spring Break this week, so campus is pretty empty, beside the visitor tours and staff members, but it's a great feeling to look out of my intern window on a normal day and see the streams of students flowing through Memorial Circle. 

Beside being the center of a lot of traffic on campus, the World War II monument, the Pfluger Fountain, as well as the grass which should not be walked on, come together to make a beautiful memorial for fallen soldiers and veterans of all wars. 

So, I'm taking 12 credit hours, working my internship, and living my life. 

I should be blogging more often (especially after I posted in January and said I would be better about posting more regularly), but that hasn't happened. Maybe I will be motivated to be a better blogger now, but who knows.

I'll leave you with a photo I took for one of my first assignments at this internship.

I went out and took pictures of the first blooming tulips on campus (for the #TexasTech Instagram account, of course). Have I mentioned how great this job is?

Off to increase my social media presence some more,

The Purple Writer