Minced Garlic

The garlic harvest is in, and i still have 4 dozen heads of last year's garlic that are starting to sprout. I'm rich in garlic, but what to do with it all?

One evening, after turning off the computer at 9:00 p.m., i peel all that garlic and throw it into the food processor. That makes a quart of minced garlic, which i cover in olive oil and store in the refrigerator. This jar of minced garlic will keep longer than the raw garlic, some heads of which had already turned brown.

We, ourselves, don't last forever. One writer-friend tells me that, at 80, she's forgetting many of the names she wants to write about in her memoir about back-to-the-land in the 1960s.

Now is the time to sprout your meditation practice or your own creativity. Don't wait. Life doesn't last forever.

Hostess Gift: A Bottle of....

We went over to a friend's home for Easter dinner. Although my sweetie and our host couple drink wine, i do not, and i don't feel quite right about bringing a bottle of wine to dinner. I finally solved my little problem: I now take a bottle of olive oil. The bottle sometimes looks like a bottle of wine, and yesterday's olive oil came from a company that also sells wine.

I can't tell you how happy i am to have put this niggling not-quite-rightness to rest.

As we go through our day, we have all sorts of trifling little ruffles of our conscience. We may breeze over most of them. No one else may even notice, but in our hearts, we know something is not quite right.

Living a skillful life calls on us to be true to ourselves, whether or not anyone else notices.

Garlic Generosity

The garlic harvest is in: 200 heads of big fat garlic cloves. (I get these great results with stiff-neck garlic, not with soft-neck.) So, perhaps you can imagine why i had about 40 heads of garlic left over from last year.

By this time, the old garlic are so easy to peel. The papery skin falls right off of each clove. But, the cloves are beginning to dry out and look a little aged (sort of like moi). Still, they are good for throwing into sauces or sautees where they pretty much disappear.

In the past, i have peeled my excess garlic cloves and stored them in olive oil. But i am so rich in fresh garlic that i don't get around to using the olive-oiled garlic. So it's time to give them away. I take them with me to every meeting and class i go to (yoga, writing, trapeze), and it's not long before last year's garlic have gone to other women's kitchens.

Now i can start giving away some of this year's harvest as a hostess present every time i go visit friends.