Avocados go beyond guacamole

Pity the poor avocado. It's often misunderstood.

It's not the typical fruit that you eat fresh out of hand. Once an avocado is ripe, it goes bad quickly.

And avocados have a reputation of getting smashed, mixed with other ingredients and, presto, you have guacamole.

Not that guacamole is a bad thing. You can serve it as a dip or as a spread for sandwiches or put a dollop of it on grilled chicken or a burger.

But the avocado has many more culinary uses, from soup to salads to frozen yogurt.

Currently, Hass avocados (the ones with pebbly skins) from Mexico are in abundance and growers in California are shipping theirs out as well.

This time of year, avocados have a rich buttery taste and chances are you will find them at a decent price.

Nutrition experts have been touting them for years. Avocados are high in monounsaturated fat -- the kind of fat that helps lower LDL (bad) and helps increase HDL (good) cholesterol.

Avocados are one of the five MUFAs ( monounsaturated fatty acids in plant-based foods) in Prevention Magazine's popular Flat Belly Diet. The diet calls for eating one MUFA at every meal. (The other foods are nuts and seeds, oils, olives and dark chocolate.)

Many varieties of avocados are available year-round, with the Hass being the most common grocery-store variety. Hass avocados are shipped in from California and Mexico. Some stores also carry the smoother-skinned Fuerte variety from Florida. It is larger but has more water content.

Choose your variety

The Fuerte is a favorite of Florine Mark, president and CEO of the Weight Watchers Group in Farmington Hills, Mich., because she gets more avocado, fewer calories and less fat.

Mark puts avocados on salads and tops grilled salmon with slices, claiming that it's "absolutely delicious." She even uses mashed avocado on her face, saying it's a good moisturizer.

"They are also very pretty to put on my kitchen table mixed with lemons and tomatoes and used as a centerpiece," Mark says.

When using as a centerpiece, buy hard, unripe avocados and place them in a bowl -- they'll ripen in about four days.

Mark doesn't make guacamole much because she says you "use too much avocado and then it becomes too fattening for me." Instead she mixes onions, tomatoes, lime juice, cilantro and cooked white or red beans and then adds chunks of avocado last.