Old Timer's Habits: Transplanting Garlic

Battle of the Meatballs

The next installment of the series:

Revenge of the Garlic

Garlic that had sprouted

Tubs from butter and sour cream I tried holes in the bottom last year for

some of my herbs and they grew moldy

from not being able to drain.

Drill and larger drill bit Larger holes drilled in the sides

painted the outsides painted lables on the outsides

Growing garlic cloves

March 7, 2014

March 13, 2014

March 17, 2014

Last year I grew basil in my garden. I grew it as a companion plant to keep bugs off the tomatoes. One of the recipes I was using for meatballs called for basil and I was out of the dried .99 cents a bottle variety I use. So I went out to the garden and clipped some leaves and threw it with the sauce. Previously when I would make spaghetti with meatballs my kids would eat the noodles and the meatballs and not want the sauce. We had a rule that if you wanted the meatballs you had to have the sauce with it. This would lead to my kids picking the meatballs out then scraping the sauce off. They would then eat the noodles and the meatballs with a small mound of sauce and noodles off to the side on their plates. It was always a comical battle. This time was different. While I was still cooking my husband and kids came into the kitchen to tell me dinner smelled good. I could smell the sauce a little, which is unusual but it looked like spaghetti sauce to me.

I served dinner and we went through our normal battle of the meatballs. Now when you pull your meatballs out of sauce you can’t help but get a little of the sauce on the meatball. My oldest son ate his first meatball.

He said “Mm that’s good sauce Mom.” This of course made me and my husband pause.

I said “thank you”. His sisters then dipped their fingers into the sauce to try it.

“This is good Mom”, from my oldest daughter.

“Thank you” I said.After a few more second of shock I tried it myself.

I know that good cooks sample their cooking to gauge what food need as they cook. My husband does this often, tasting the food, adding a little more of this, some of that, till he say whatever he is cooking is right. This doesn’t work for me; I have tried this upon my husband’s request, to experiment and see if I could tell what was missing or needed. It never works. I can’t tell. This experience was different; I could taste a difference in the sauce. I could taste the basil. It was a really neat experience for me.

I believe now that the difference for me was in the fresh from the garden flavor. Herbs must lose a large amount of their flavor when it goes from the garden to the store and even more when it’s dried. I now only have problems getting my kids to eat spaghetti sauce if I have not put fresh basil in the sauce. They always know when I have because they all have a sense of smell like my husbands. I knew from my experiences with my husband’s turkey that there can be a great difference in how food tastes based on the care taken in the preparation of food. It can be very delicious or very bland. What was different for me this time was the tasting of a single herb.

Why do I go into this experience? I will be trying a new item in my garden this year that I hope to add to my spaghetti; fresh garlic instead of powdered .99 cent garlic powder.

June 3, 2014