Domestipithecus

This weekend Boo and I went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. We love food festivals, this one and the Oxnard Strawberry one being our favorites. Oxnard can be a day trip, though last year we stayed in the area), but Gilroy is a 5 1/2 hour drive (on a good day) so we opt to stay up there.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, this drive was pretty good, traffic-wise. The accident I mentioned was nearer to the end of the drive - about an hour or so out from Milpitas. This was the best picture I could get without looking like some lame person taking pictures of someone’s misfortune:

The drive to the festival from Milpitas was re-donkulous. It took about an hour to get from the freeway off-ramp to the parking lot. Couldn’t have been more than a couple miles. This was the final stretch - the red arrow is where the parking lot entrance is:

We made it!

I could smell the garlic roasting from here

Garlic Olympics?

We shopped around for a big hat for me because the sun was awful and it was freakin HOT. After that and some water, it was time to eat.

Being vegetarian at one of these things is difficult, I can’t imagine we should even bother once we go vegan. Well, garlic fries should be ok. Anyway…

We decided this looked like a good place

And we got amazing tasting corn with garlic butter. It was so crazy tasty we were surprised. The garlic fries were good, though the best garlic fries are at Dodger Stadium.

There was the Fruit Smoooooothie ($3 refills!!)

Then I saw it. It was calling out to me…

I practically sprinted to the tent and got about a head’s worth of delicious goodness

I added some of the garlic ranch they had there after this picture and it made it just that little bit better. I almost suggested a second serving.

There was some garlic dude posing for pictures. I hope he was wearing something under that.

We got 2 large garlic braids, I use it a lot in my cooking, garlic mustard and some pickled garlic. Then we got a fruit smoothie refill and a funnel cake and walked to the car. Once we go there we tried to eat the cake in the air-conditioned car, but that was a little messy. So we stood outside the car and ate it. And got powdered sugar everywhere. What is it with eating these things with forks? That never works. After a stiff wind blew a puff of sugar on me, I gave up trying to be delicate about it and dug in

We went back to the hotel and showered then wandered around the area where our hotel was. We had some wine with dinner and a beer before bed and slept hard.

On the drive home, we stopped at Casa de Fruta.

I love that place. We had some breakfast foods (though it was around 1pm) though I did get quite a frown from the waitress when I told her I didn’t want any bacon with my “combo”. She told me I could sub sausage I said, “No, no meat at all, thanks. I’m vegetarian.” Sometimes if you don’t specify the veg part they will bring it out on the plate and expect you to eat around it or end up just taking it off, cause yeah, I want flesh juices on my potatoes. *hurl* She looked at me like I just insulted her and her entire lineage. She never brought my toast either.

My Boo outside Casa de Restaurant

After we ate we visited their Casa de Sweets, wandered by the Casa de Choo-choo and the fruit & veggie stand, as well as the gift shop. We bought a bunch of taffy and fruit and stuff.

Then we did the long drive home. It was a good weekend.