Carpinteria Daughters Pen Definitive Avocado Book

As preteen girls getting muddy in the avocado orchards of Carpinteria during the 1970s, Sarah Allaback and Monique Parsons never guessed how integral those groves would become to all of us. Once a regional and seasonal specialty, avocados are now nearly ubiquitous across much of the world all year long, but they’re playing an even more personal role in the lives of these childhood chums.

Decades after both graduated from Princeton and settled elsewhere — Allaback to Amherst, where she’s an author/historian of architecture and landscape preservation; Parsons to Chicago, where she’s a journalist of religion and other topics — they reunited four years ago to tell the avocado’s tale. After much diving through the archives, interviewing surviving pioneers, and developing their research into a compelling saga, the result is Green Gold: The Avocado’s Remarkable Journey from Humble Superfood to the Toast of the Nation.

“Growing up in Carpinteria, we took them for granted,” said Parsons. “Then we went off to the East Coast and couldn’t find a good avocado. Now they’re on every menu, at every restaurant, in every grocery store. We wanted to tell the story of how that happened.”

They’d wanted to work on a project together for a long time, but it was Parsons’s husband who “planted the seed” of an avocado book. “We thought we would give it a try,” said Parsons. “We blended our skillsets and returned home. It was really wonderful to return as part of this project.”

At first, Allaback tried to craft a more traditional agricultural history, but “it was deadly dull — I couldn’t bear it.” Then she found out about Wilson Popenoe, one of the first to spread the avocado gospel in California and tracked down an archive of his correspondence at Carnegie Mellon. “It was a treasure trove,” she said. “We never looked back.”

Through Popenoe and other early players, including Parsons’s own grandmother, they found their niche. “A lot had been written about avocados, but nothing we found really focused on the characters who had made this phenomenon happen,” said Parsons. “There wasn’t a nonfiction narrative book that focused on avocados the way we had books on salt and cod.”

As Allaback dug through the files, Parsons put on her journalist hat. “I just started picking up the phone and talking to people,” she said. “Everyone I talked to sent me to two or three other people.” She visited UC Riverside, found Poponoe’s 95-year-old daughter in Guatemala, attended the World Avocado Congress in New Zealand, and even talked to the guy who wrote the “Avocados from Mexico” jingle.

R. G. Hass avocado patent filed April 17, 1935 (left) and “Fuerte,” Amanda Amira Newton, 1917. USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection. | Images: Courtesy United States Patent and Trademark Office, Courtesy National Agricultural Library, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of the Interior

Meanwhile, their affinity for the fruit only deepened as they tasted multiple varieties and cooked creative recipes, many of which are published in the book. Though her family grows the commercially popular Hass, Parsons loves the Reed and GEM cultivars, liking them mostly with just lemon and salt. “But during the course of this, I have become more open minded to using avocado in recipes in certain ways,” said Parsons, such as in an avocado-chocolate mousse. “I’ve marveled at how versatile this fruit is.”

As a high school and college runner — she was actually in Carp’s first ever “avocado race” back in 1978 — avocados were part of Allaback’s training routine. She topped pizza with them before a competition, as was recommended in a Runner’s World article. But she was down to eating only one a month until she started working on Green Gold, when Parsons started sending her packages of avocados.

“Now, I can’t go without an avocado every day,” said Allaback, who loves eating the Fuerte variety all by itself. “It’s an elegant fruit. It’s not bumpy, it’s green with little yellow specks. When you cut it open, I just find the color beautiful. And there’s a real flavor. It’s hard to nail down, but you get addicted.”

So has much of the rest of the world, with avocado toast, guacamole, and other avo. applications easily found on menus across the United States and beyond, amounting to an $18 billion industry. “You just see the avocado everywhere now,” said Parsons. “It’s become a global icon.”

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Monique Parsons and Sarah Allaback will sign copies and talk about Green Gold: The Avocado’s Remarkable Journey from Humble Superfood to the Toast of the Nation at Chaucer’s Bookstore on Wed., May 28, at 6 p.m. They will also likely return for the Carpinteria Avocado Festival in October. See greengoldbook.com.