Desserts

I love dessert. I say this again and again. All kinds of desserts: cakes and cookies and donuts and pies and ice cream and tortes and fruit and custards and … The list is never ending. There is not a dessert that I won't eat.

With liking so many desserts is, well, my waistline. I can eat way more desserts than my body is happy with. All in moderation is the name of the game. To that end, Husband keeps me in line and makes satisfying AND healthy* desserts.

* Healthy is no added additives or preservatives. There is fat and sugar in our desserts. We do not believe in low-fat additives of fakeness. Let's just be clear on that! :-)

So, Husband made pies. Strawberry during strawberry season which was late-June. And Blueberry during blueberry season which was July. Both were sweetened with agave nectar. Both had homemade pastry tops with organic butter and unbleached organic flour. The blueberry pie even had a touch of spelt flour tossed in.

Both pies were delicious and satisfying. Give me my desserts. Even when they are healthy options.

Garlic

At this year's Carp Garlic Festival, we bought 40+ bulbs of garlic. All different kinds of garlic: some hot, some mild, some peppery, some that tasted like grass. Yes, grass. The intention is to plant some of the bulbs in our own garden, and most of it is to eat.

We bought all different kinds: Spanish Roja - our favourite! - Music, Persian Star, Prairie Purple, and other kinds we don't know the names of.

Garlic is a cinch to grow.* Garlic grows much like tulips: plant the bulb in fall and come springtime, the little green sprouts will be the first things you see poking out of the ground.

We have been growing garlic for 4 years, and last year we had our own garden garlic last from harvest time - August - through until May of the following year. We didn't have to buy garlic from the grocery store! Our fresh garlic kept for all those months, in a paperbag, in a cool dark place. We will be doing the same with the fresh garlic we bought this year: storing it in a cool dark place, in a paperbag, and checking it every month or so for softspots.

We have not bought garlic from the grocery store in many years. The trouble with grocery store garlic is that it is often grown in China and shipped around the world. So by the time it is bought and arrives in your kitchen, it is old and dry, and usually tasteless. And what kind is it? Is it hot, peppery, grassy? Who knows. Grocery store garlic is only ever labelled as "garlic."

Try growing your own garlic. It's easy, requires almost no care, and you will notice the difference immediately with the first meal you make. You will wonder why you didn't do it before. If you don't have space to grow your own, buy freshly grown garlic. Fresh garlic makes such a difference to the foods you cook.


*This is not a garlic growing how-to. There are much better how-to's available on the web.