On Valentine’s Day we hosted a garlic tasting party. It really wasn’t because it was Valentine’s Day, more that it was the only Saturday available to have one. Eleven of us tasted four varieties: Northern White, Creole Red, Ajo Rojo, and Silver White. We started out with hummus, moved onto great home canned tomato sauce with pasta, delicious salad with dressing, alla tamen fillet of cod roll-ups, and topped it off with chocolate tofu pudding with garlic flavored whipped cream (yah..you got it…garlic flavored whipped cream. To be honest, I was the only one who really liked it). Each food item was eaten four times with a variety represented in each food item.

We had adjectives describing the garlics’ tastes such as bitter, strong, tangy, zingy, mellow, zowie, raw and intense, piquant, good and warm, zip up of heat, most unique, mild, bland. Quite the crew for getting into the descriptions, huh? No one knew the varieties until after we were done eating.

The winner?? Drum roll please…..Ajo Rojo! It was a great evening of eating and laughing. My Valentine Randy’s and my favorite was Creole Red. We’ll do it again next year as we’ll have new varieties to taste. We really don’t need reasons to gather and eat garlic, do we?