DAY 130 -- Garlic

When I think of garlic, I often think of a line from the movie "Crocodile Dundee II" where Walt watches an Aborigine named Diamond eating a bat he had roasted over the fire.  Walt asks him, "Are you really enjoying that?"  and Diamond responds, "Nah - needs garlic."

I love garlic.  If a recipe calls for garlic, I usually add an extra amount.  Yet, until recently, I rarely used fresh garlic; I used minced garlic that comes in a jar.  I guess I figured since it was found in the produce section, it counted as fresh.

Now, since I try to use fresh ingredients when cooking, I started using real fresh garlic.  Wow...more flavor!

I think the main reason I avoided using fresh garlic in the past was because the first time (and probably the only time) I used fresh garlic I had two problems... First of all, I didn't know how to get into the garlic sections and spent a large amount of time peeling and peeling and peeling each little section. Frustrating.  Second of all -- and this is a major problem -- I didn't know that each "section" was actually considered a "clove"... I thought the entire bulb was a clove.  So the recipe, calling for one clove, received the entire bulb.

Ok.  I love garlic.  But not that much!!  And so began the tradition of using jarred garlic, up until recently when my daughter showed me how to peel the cloves quick and easy.

It's amazing how I avoided using fresh garlic all these years because I thought it was hard to prepare.  Kind of like when I never made homemade mashed potatoes until starting this challenge.  (See Mashed Potatoes)

Now I have to be careful when I add extra garlic to a recipe because of the stronger flavor of the fresh kind.  I don't want to my husband to respond, when asked if he's enjoying his meal, "Nah - needs less garlic!"