This week's Theme Thursday is Festival.
In late July my wonderful husband starts smelling like a vampire repellent. It's on his breath, in his skin, and it pours out of him for days. He just stinks! He ate it with his fries, with mushrooms and escargot, it was in his sausage sandwich, in with the calamari and shrimp scampi even in his ice cream, and no piece of bread was spared. He and I ate all of this at the 31st Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.
Eating is the number one reason to go to any festival, and the Garlic Festival is one of the places to go. But instead of eating ourselves silly we went for a noble reason-to volunteer for the Marrow Donor Registry. I don't know the exact number of new registrants because I lost count after 60! And that was halfway our five hour shift! As a member of Team In Training, fighting blood cancer is my game so I'm a registered as a marrow donor.
As a treat for volunteering we treated ourselves to garlic everything and a few ungarlicy things.
My husband and I were so happy and gluttonous to eat everything in site I forgot to snap photos of the crawfish and deep-fried battered garlic cloves. :-( Here's what I did snap.
My husband and I have gone to this festival on and off for the past six years. The food is always great, the arts and crafts are fun to look at and the weather is always hot, but we were a little disappointed this year. With the bad economy come the price hikes, but did they have to downgrade the food with it? The mushrooms and escargot vendors are now cooking thier food without seasoning! Sure you can get seasoning and salt on the side but it doesn't taste the same. And $7 for a small bowl of calamari in garlicy marinara sauce with one little slice of garlic bread? You pay too much for too little overcooked rubbery calamari. I was really disappointed. In spite of the price increase on everything we still ate and ate and ate.
I come for the free garlic ice cream! It tastes like sweet mild roasted garlic. On a hot bright sunny day, this cold sweet is really refreshing and worth the long wait in the line.
Regardless of how much he eats or how little I eat, we're both not great people to hang out with after the festival. Just ask my parents. :-)
18 comments:
What a wonderful festival? But garlic ice cream!! That is going too far.
A garlic festival?! My dad would love this...huge garlic eater! Interesting :)
xoxo
Where would we be without garlic? Or any of the onion/lily family??
Always wanted to do this festival. I went to the Castroville artichoke fest once, years ago. It was nice. Gilroy was a blip on the radar when I was growing up in LA. I knew where it was only because my father represented the Gilroy radio station (only one at the time) and we would stop there on the way up to San Fran. Good luck with your running. Good causes and focus for your blog.
is that a big flaming garlic in the first pic? too cool. garlic ice cream though...maybe just once. smiles.
A festival to keep the vampires at bay! ;^)
Garlic is good for your health, although not good for those around you! Garlic ice cream is a new one on me.
Oh yum...this is one festival I would love to try!
I love me some garlic, but ice cream? Hmmmm... I dunno! Still, I'm glad somebody decided garlic needed its own fesival.
garlic ice cream? i'm normally a big fan of anything ice cream...but i have my doubts about that one!
That's my kind of festival!
Gabby, I would love to take in this festival! Mmmmmm...garlic! I know too well the ability to "sweat" it out but it keeps away the bugs( and just about everything/body else-LOL! )
Too, the marrow drive is a good thing( one of my uncles passed on from poison blood ). Kudos to you and the team :)
I watched this festival on the Food network years ago. I have yet to attend, but I plan to as I love love love garlic!!! :)
Garlic Ice cream? GAH!; No problem as long as you both eat it I guess. I love the flavour but not it's antisocial leanings. My son puts garlic on everything. And yeh, he's a bit stinky!
Haha, the capture was "Burpsio"
Thanks for all the comments everyone!
Brian-The flaming garlic is way cool.
Don't trash the garlic ice cream folks. You have to try it before you knock it and it really is mild and sweet. Plus you can't go wrong if it's being given away for free. :-)
Subtrop77-Sorry to hear about your uncle passing. What's his name? I'll run the race in honor of him by putting his name on my jersey. :-)
Gabby, no worries there. If it's got garlic in it, I have to at least try it, heh, heh. Nosferatu beware-LOL!
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