I'll be making a new batch of guacamole in the next day or so, and you can expect a proper recipe post when that happens, but right now, I want to wax philosophical.

I am not one of those people who believes that the only good food is food that is made from scratch in one's own kitchen. Sometimes it is. And sometimes, there's a product out there on the shelves that's cheaper, easier, and almost as good as if you'd made it yourself. I take it like I take everything - on a case by case basis.

But in the case of guacamole, there's only one good reason not to make your own, and that reason is very situation and location specific.

First, guacamole is easy. I mean crazy easy. You have to master one skill in order to make guacamole if you own a food processor. If you don't own a food processor, you also have to be able to chop a couple of vegetables finely. Once you've learned how to separate the skin and pit from the flesh of an avocado, you are always ten minutes away from guacamole.

Second, store-bought guacamole is either expensive, or it's not. Have you seen what they charge for fresh guacamole at Whole Foods? Holy crap. You'd think, given the price per pound, that the only way to make guacamole was to have a unicorn poop gold-covered rainbows into it. And as an accomplished home cook and food blogger, I assure you that step is entirely optional.

And then there's the tubs of guacamole you can get in the dairy aisle at your local grocery store for about a buck fifty. These are not actually guacamole. They aren't made of avocados. I'm not sure why the FDA lets companies put spices and green food coloring into sour cream and call it guacamole, since the name fucking well means AVOCADO SAUCE, but that's deregulation for you. This stuff is good for one thing only - dipping those grilled taquitos from Taco Bell into. And Taco Bell gives you a tiny plastic vessel of the stuff, so don't buy it at the supermarket. You're only encouraging lying dip-makers.

So if it's not cheaper to buy in a store, and it's not easier than buying it in a store, what's the only good reason not to make guacamole at home? Well, if you live in the Midwest, don't have any avocados, and decide you want guacamole today? You're fucked. Finding ripe avocados in a Midwestern grocery store is like stumbling across Brigadoon. It can happen, but not very often. So here, you have to know about five days in advance of wanting guacamole that you're gonna want guacamole. That way, the green rocks Cub sells will have time to sit in a paper bag on your counter and turn into something a human being could conceivably mash.

Other than that caveat, though, there's no excuse. You can make guacamole with five ingredients if you have to, and make even better guacamole without ever crossing into double digits. And even with avocados pushing a buck fifty apiece these days, it's still going to be cheaper than any store-bought stuff that actually has avocados in it. So do it already.