Another fabulous thing about Monterey - we are about 40 minutes away from Gilroy, the garlic capitol of the world! On Saturday we had the pleasure of attending the 31st annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.
In this tent, they were having a garlic chicken stir-fry cook-off... the smell was seriously amazing!!
This booth had lots of samples to try - we had garlic bbq sauce, garlic horse radish, and best (and maybe weirdest) of all, garlic jelly! The jelly was surprisingly sweet, and can be used many different ways, including as a finishing glaze for chicken.
Another amazing and unexpected treat - garlic ice cream! It was vanilla and roasted garlic, and again, surprisingly sweet and delicious!!
Of course, we had to check out the rides as well. Our good friends (and lucky for us, our next door neighbors as well!) Joined us at the festival. Here in a teacup are Hunter, Kaitlyn, and Brandon....
Probably my favorite food at the festival - beer battered garlic fries... these were not just garlic fries, these were GARLIC fries! All those white dots you see in the picture below - straight up garlic - amazing!!!
Hunter wasn't overly thrilled with all the garlic, but he did enjoy a lovely fruit smoothie!
And lastly, mushrooms! Garlic marinated mushrooms...mmmmm
And lastly, mushrooms! Garlic marinated mushrooms...mmmmm
And garlic stuffed mushrooms!!
It was a very fun day (not to mention extremely tasty!!)
The agriculture out there is amazing, I wish we had more time to visit...there's always next time.
ReplyDeleteput it on the calendar for next year. I can't wait. I am very jealous you got there before me.
ReplyDeleteOne of the cool things about Gilroy that we enjoyed growing up is that when it is warm enough (which Gilroy typically is) you can smell the garlic as you drive through. Even WITH the windows up!
ReplyDeleteI think the Strawberry Festival was this weekend as well. A yummy weekend on the Central Coast.
Oh, and you probably had garlic coming out your pores when you woke up this morning! You can get those same fries at Giants games and that is usually what happened to me...