Would you like to sample our avocado coffee?

First things first. Is avocado a fruit or a vegetable? I'm sure I could look it up and have the answer in mere seconds, but I want to guess.

My hypothesis? Fruit. I feel like avocado is one of those fruits that gets mistaken for a vegetable all the time. Like the tomato. There's also some rule that could probably be put on that "Are You Smarter Than An Eighth Grader?" show distinguishing the two. I don't remember what the rule entails, but I feel like fruit grows on trees and vegetables own the vines and ground. But wait, that can't be right. Grapevines. Hmm. (This is my mind at work. You're witnessing it. I'm not editing at all.)

So this rule tells you basically what's a fruit and what's a vegetable. Seeds? No. Pits? Hmm, maybe pits. Fruit has pits. Maybe. Okay, you've suffered enough. I'm looking it up. I'm, in fact, not smarter than an eighth grader.

Okay, Wikipedia says avocado is a fruit. Truth.

Wikipedia is a fountain of knowledge. The question of whether a tomato was a fruit or a vegetable made it's way to the Supreme Court in 1883 in the ever-so famous case of Nix v. Hedden. The call was unanimous! Believe it or not, even though botanically the tomato is in fact a fruit, it was ruled a vegetable by our Supreme Court. For taxing purposes. Debauchery!

Okay, so vegetables are: seeds, stems, roots, flowers, bulbs, and "botanical fruits", (examples of which include pumpkin, squash, and cucumbers.) Or, "plants grown for food." Interesting.

Fruits, on the other hand, are, "ripened ovaries" with fleshy tissue surrounding it. Yummm.

I think I'm more clear on that now. And the lengths our government will go for taxes. Ignoring the rules of nature! We should be mad, I think.

Back to the subject at hand. Avocados. The fruit of California. I swear, they're everywhere. It's not that I dislike them, I don't. I just don't want them on every single dish I order.

You may love avocados, and that's great. But seriously, I challenge you to go to any resturant in the LA area, that doesn't specialize in Asian food, and find a menu free from the avocado. They're on burgers and salads, steaks and sandwiches. They display their avocados at my local Subway, and I visited another chain resturant today, in which avocados were where they weren't previously. I'm going to start ordering by default, "Hold the avocado."

This isn't a recent discovery I've made. I noticed when I first arrived that they were featured quite prominently on many menus. In fact, I was driving around a couple of days ago, and was joking to myself that there should be an Avocado St. ("It would be the most popular street in the city!") Not ten minutes later did I, in fact, pass such a street. No kidding.