Moving to Gilroy three and a half years ago hasn’t made me
immune to the lure of garlic. If anything, I enjoy it more than
ever. I love the stuff.
Moving to Gilroy three and a half years ago hasn’t made me immune to the lure of garlic. If anything, I enjoy it more than ever. I love the stuff. I probably use too much of it, if there’s such a thing. Crude though it may seem, there’s nothing to match a good garlic burp (although some might argue that a good beer burp is as satisfying). In my mind, if a little garlic is good, a lot is great. And that’s why missing this year’s Garlic Festival is so sad for me.
I’m in the Midwest, driving among relatives and friends, and attending a reunion. (Inexplicably, in these parts, garlic is a mere condiment, not a religious center or source of inspiration.) So, by the time you read this, the crowds in Christmas Hill Park will have come and gone. The best Garlic Festival ever will be a memory, cleanup will be mostly done, and the thousands of volunteers will be back to their everyday lives. The folks working Gourmet Alley will begin regrowing their singed eyebrows and arm hair. And I’m thousands of miles away, lamenting how I missed out on the fun, the new dishes, and the buzz that comes at the most important day of the year in Gilroy.
I think of the poor shmoes throughout the world who have to live so far from the center of the garlic universe, some who live their lives unaware of Gilroy’s garlicky magnificence. Invariably, when people I talk to from far away find out about the Garlic Festival and its pungent foods, they ask me what garlic ice cream tastes like (probably the number-one question), what it smells like around here during harvest time, and other garlic-related questions.
Look back through the Gilroy Dispatch’s archives by doing a search on at www.gilroydispatch.com. Type “Garlic Festival” into the search widget and read about the things that have happened this year: Better recycling, improved recipes, new recipes, new stainless steel stoves and sinks (everyone should shout thanks to Alan Heinzen and his company for their generous donation). The folks running the traffic and transportation keep improving an already great system, never content to let good enough be good enough.
If you’ve ever been to food-centered festivals in other places throughout the country, you know that many are enjoyable, provide fabulous food-filled insights into some form of local-favorite cooking, and offer some entertainment.
Unlike the Garlic Festival, quite a few are celebrations of the local restaurants, local artists, or important events or themes, but not the agricultural product that fuels the town, the grown-from-the-ground-up gem that makes the place special.
You can hold a chili cook-off anywhere; same with a barbecued rib festival. Several vegetables and such critters as lobster, crayfish, and shrimp drive crowds to festivals throughout the United States. A few are almost oxymorons: Drive miles to eat dozens of dishes made with broccoli? Hop a plane to sample cauliflower? Endure days with relatives to munch on Brussels sprouts? Some of these foods are yummy, but they just aren’t garlic.
I grew up in a town that was a lot like Gilroy, although its claim to fame was onions instead of garlic. Sadly, nobody got the idea to have an onion festival. Since it was a town originally settled by Dutch farmers, someone got a tulip festival together, and it was moderately successful, although I don’t recall any local delicacies involving tulip bulbs. And nobody was nearly as savvy as the Garlic Festival Association folks, in planning, in execution, and in sheer capability to improve the event and its experience.
For me, the worst part of missing this year’s Garlic Festival has to be my inability to try the fried garlic bologna sandwiches. Even though my siblings could chow down on peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches every day, as a kid I found those sticky wastes of bread to be loathsome. But a bologna sandwich was divine.
On many a Saturday morning, my dad would get up and fry eggs and bacon, but if there wasn’t any bacon, he’d fry bologna. Maybe it was the salt, the tangy taste of the bologna, or the combination of the bologna and fried eggs, but it was a true culinary treat. I haven’t had fried bologna in over 35 years, and so I was hoping for that blast of nostalgia, coupled with a dose of good garlic.
So, I’m whining. But next year I’ll be there. Bet on it.
