Hey y’all! Today is a happy day. I harvested garlic from my garden and made some pesto with it! I also get to braid my garlic and it made me so proud!

This is my first year with garlic and a last minute decision. I got extra big pots this March after starting the garden, then I saw an old head of garlic in the fridge all shrunk up and it had some sprouting already. So why not. I split the cloves and pushed them root down into the soil and boy they grew! Not only the shoots were sky high but also the white roots completely took up the pots. By June their leaves have fell on the ground so I dug them up. The garlic bulbs were on the small side Β – but they smelt sooo good. I could have put them back in the soil and given them a bit more time but I just cannot wait anymore!

I had so much fun watching them grow and just wanted to play with them as long as I can. So I decided to braid them. After cleaning the dirt off and drying them outside for a few days, I followed this awesome video “how to braid garlic”Β and gave it my best. My garlic were small so the final product did not look as impressive as the one in the video. But it did not stop them to serve as an awesome weapon for Mr. Apron Vampire Hunter. πŸ™‚

I love my garlic braid so much now and just want to look at it forever. When hubby wants to use them I am all like “do not touch my garlic!”, which totally defeat the purpose of growing garlic. They also smell great. Hubby and I both love love love garlic and use lots of them in our dishes. One of my favorite way of eating garlic is to cook them with meat until they are soft and no longer spicy. Like this 40-garlic chicken. But to be honest my harvest is so small I probably cannot even get 40 garlic cloves out of them haha.

I also like picked garlic growing up. They are called “sugar garlic” in Chinese and they are a must-have for hot-pot in North China. And it is incredibly easy to make: fill a mason jar with garlic, dissolve one part of sugar in two parts of white vinegar and pour the mix into the jar until all the garlic submerge. Then close the jar and wait until the garlic is sweet and sour but not spicy anymore. It is salivating and great to eat with meat. My grandparents usually pickle whole garlic this way – he peeled off the hard skin but left a thin layer to hold the cloves together – and it usually takes a couple month before it is ready. I am impatient so I usually pickle cloves and remove almost all the skin, which only takes a couple weeks on the counter and up to a month in the fridge.

I am very curious if my garlic taste as good as they smell. So I agreed to use one head of garlic for pesto since we had another basil harvest today. It was GREAT. We made so much and had to freeze some in an ice tray.

Now I know what I am gonna put in my winter garden – garlic garlic and garlic!