CELEBRATING CINCO DE MAYO


Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that calls for celebration and entertaining.  Given that it falls on a Tuesday this year, I know a lot of parties that will be going on over this coming weekend to celebrate the holiday.  According to History.com, "Cinco de Mayo is widely interpreted as a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage" and revelers in the United States "mark the occasion with parades, parties, mariachi music, Mexican folk dancing and traditional foods." If you're among the millions celebrating this year, but need some inspiration for a crowd pleasing fiesta with true Mexican flare, you're in luck!

Chef Pai Jinich, host of the hit PBS series, "Pati's Mexican Table," is sharing with us some fun facts about avocados!  They are an extremely versatile fruit that adds creamy, rich texture and delicious flavor that will take your favorite Mexican dishes to the next level this Cinco de Mayo.



Some fun avocado facts:

  • During the week of Cinco, 33,892,841 million pounds of avocados are consumed! 
  • Over 66 million individual avocados are consumed during the week of Cinco. Enough for half of the entire Mexican population to get their own avocado.
  • The amount of avocado consumed during Cinco week is 51 times the population of Denver, the city that holds one of the top Cinco de Mayo festivals, "Celebrate Culture" and 6 times that of the entire Colorado population. 
  • The avocado is also known as the "Alligator Pear", Alligators weigh around 1,000 pounds each. The weight of the avocados consumed would equal around 33,000 alligators.


ABOUT PATI JINICH:
Born and raised in Mexico City, Pati Jinich is host of the hit PBS cooking series “Pati’s Mexican Table,” which is currently airing its fourth season nationwide (TV listings by zip code here: http://bit.ly/PMTstations). She served as a political analyst before jumping into the kitchen. Her first cookbook, Pati’s Mexican Table: The Secrets of Real Mexican Home Cooking was recommended by The New York Times and included in Amazon’s Top 20 2013 cookbooks. Jinich is a regular guest on The Chew, The Today Show, The Talk, All Things Considered and The Splendid Table. She has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and other leading national and regional press. She has cooked for President Obama at the White House’s Cinco de Mayo dinner.