FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Roma Maxwell

Director of Public Relations

Rancho La Puerta Fitness Resort & Spa

T: 858.764.5504

F: 858.764.5566

E: rmaxwell@rancholapuerta.com

www.rancholapuerta.com

CAN GUACAMOLE BE DELICIOUS AND LOW-FAT? YES—IF IT’S MADE ACCORDING TO THIS “SECRET” RECIPE FROM THE FAMED SPA “RANCHO LA PUERTA” IN MEXICO

( Tecate, Baja California, Mexico, January 25, 2007)— If you’re throwing a Super Bowl party or any get-together this winter, your corn chips are crying out to be loaded up with something creamy and fresh. Why can’t your dip be healthful as well? Years ago, Rancho La Puerta, the legendary fitness resort and spa located in Baja California, Mexico, created its own recipe for perfect low-fat and inexpensive guacamole, and their guests now clamor for the recipe every week. Surprisingly, the Mexican resort didn’t sacrifice authentic flavor to achieve this bit of caloric legerdemain.

True guacamole is an unadulterated delight: no thickeners, no blending—just chunky mashed avocados (perfectly ripe of course) with a dash of lime juice (preferably the Mexican limon that looks like a hard round green golf ball), salt, and perhaps some chopped onion and jalapeño . Sadly, it is rather high-calorie-- “good” calories in the sense that the oily fruit is considered a welcome part of any nutritionally balanced meal, but high-calorie just the same.

Rancho La Puerta’s secret ingredient is really a disarmingly simple technique: The chefs in the “Ranch” kitchen “stretch” the classic avocado recipe with an additional ingredient straight from their 6-acre organic farm.   They add broccoli, asparagus, or edamame. When one of these green additions (the choice often depends on the season and what’s available fresh) is mashed with avocados the “guac” still achieves a textural perfection while the tomatoes, cilantro, onion and jalapeño peppers ignite a remarkable depth of flavor.    The essential simplicity and joy of using organic ingredients in creative ways sets the table for a guilt-free, nutritionally rich recipe that is a pleasure to prepare for friends and family.    With avocado crop prices affected by this winter’s freezing temperatures and with only one avocado required per batch, this recipe is pleasing to the pocketbook as well as your palate—and your body fat index, unless, of course, you’re a NFL lineman trying to keep your weight up to survive   in the Super Bowl trenches.

Rancho La Puerta’s culinary traditions go back 67 years.   An abundance of organic fruits and vegetables continue to be the staple of its meals. Its 6-acre organic farm “Tres Estrellas” (Three Stars), where fruits, herbs and vegetables thrive beneath a mountain, provides the bulk of the resort’s famous fresh food.

Rancho La Puerta’s Aztec Guacamole

10-ounces of broccoli flowers

1 medium avocado, pit removed, scooped out and chopped

1 lime, juiced

1/8 teaspoon salt

½ cup cilantro, chopped

½ ripe tomato, seeded and diced

½ small yellow onion, finely diced

½ small jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely diced

Parboil the broccoli flowers for 7 minutes and then drain under running cold water. In a food processor bowl fitted with a sharp blade, combine the broccoli flowers and avocado. Pulse very briefly. Add the lime juice and salt and pulse again to blend, keeping as chunky as desired (authenticity requires some chunkiness!).

Add the cilantro, tomato, onion and jalapeño and pulse about 3 times. Again, do not over-process the guacamole.

Variations: Instead of broccoli flowers, you may use 10 ounces of edamame "beans" or asparagus spears (parboiled 3-5 minutes and then drained under running cold water).

Makes 2 cups of low-fat, creamy guacamole.

***

Ranch Background : The original fitness resort and spa, Rancho La Puerta welcomes some 125 guests each week to its 3,000 private acres of gardens, organic farm, mountains, hiking paths, and meadows. All facilities and land are for the exclusive use of its guests, who come for the week, ensuring the delights of a warm and welcoming shared community. The climate is near-perfect; warm and dry, with some showers, in winter, and warm with very low humidity in summer. Rancho La Puerta is located only about 25 miles from the Pacific Ocean at an elevation of 1,700 feet.

The cuisine is semi-vegetarian, featuring an abundance of organic fruits and vegetables. The freshest-of-the-fresh seafood from the port of Ensenada, Baja California, brought in by the resort’s own driver and buyer from a fishermen’s market where the local boats come in daily, allowing the Ranch chefs to prepare spectacular seafood dishes five times week. All meals offer both vegetarian and modified-vegetarian alternatives.

Soothing spa treatments, such as Rancho La Puerta’s unique Healing Massage, and a wide variety of body and skin treatments, provide a restorative balance to more active pursuits.

 “We provide the true luxury of time and space,” says co-founder Deborah Szekely, “that which is most lacking in today’s life. Space to breathe freely, to relax and enjoy what will be ‘the longer-living, younger life.’ And now we will have a school to complement that life—a school that will be like no other spa cooking program or facility.”

Week-long packages start at $2,690 per person for a double occupancy room and are inclusive of complimentary transportation from the San Diego airport and back, meals, snacks, accommodations and a wide array of fitness classes.

U.S. Reservations Office:

RANCHO LA PUERTA FITNESS RESORT & SPA

1155 Camino Del Mar, #777

Del Mar, CA 92014

T: 877.440.7778, 858.764.5500  

F: 858.764.5560

E: reservations@rancholapuerta.com

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