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.

Deep

Fried

Garlic

Boo and I arrived in Milpitas at about 7pm this evening. The drive up from Pasadena was mostly uneventful. There was a car turn-over on the 152 near Hollister, but that was about it for traffic snafus. I got some blurry pics out the window, but I can’t upload them because we didn’t bring the USB cord for the camera.

We’re staying in the same hotel we did last year and we can’t wait for dinner tomorrow night and noodles with gluten and black bean sauce at the veggie chinese place around the way. If we can find parking. It took around 20 min to find a spot last year.

Yesterday I received the Cafe Paradiso cookbook I had ordered shortly after arriving back in the states. Creative Nickname, his sister, brother and I went there while in Cork. It was fantastic. The parsnip mash was so yummy I needed to reproduce it exactly.

All the recipes in this book are amazing sounding. They do have a couple of the dishes that we had there in the book and so much more. I can’t wait to make the Pumpkin gnocchi with spinach in a roasted garlic cream. How good does that sound?

The rat’s cage should arrive today. I am looking forward to putting the boys in their new home. I am sure they will love all the space.

I am thinking of making some pasta today. I only started making it by hand after we got the KitchenAid mixer and pasta attachment. We had no idea how good fresh pasta tasted. Now we can’t go back. We like to toss it with some olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes and parsley. I think I have some old pictures…

Making the pasta:

The olive oil cooking the diced garlic and the chopped parsley (that and the red pepper flakes go in right before removing from the heat):

Tofurkey kielbasa. This stuff is amazing tasting and it’s vegan!

The finished product (tossed the pasta in the olive oil mixture):

I make egg pasta, though I have made it with Ener-G egg replacer for CN’s sister. The pasta was ok, a little more slimy than I am used to, but not bad.

I’m going to go knit some on the Alphabet Blanket. Maybe next post I’ll have enough done for a picture.

When my fiance (still no luck with a cute nickname) and I were in Ireland, the one vegetarian dish we could count on at most any place was a vegetable soup of some sort. I think the veggies in it depended on what was extra in the kitchen and in season, but they all had it.

We enjoyed it so much that when I saw a little “Best of Irish: Soups” book(let), I got it so I could make them at home.

Since I am sure that the recipe/book is copyrighted I won’t write it here, but I can tell you that there were parsnips, garlic, potatoes, onions veggie stock (this is what made it so orange looking) and dry white wine. It made the house smell amazing.

Here’s the roasted bits and all other stuff simmering on the stovetop:

After processing the whole thing (I used a blender):

Servings for two with a side of homemade sourdough:

Mmmmmm dipping… you can see the thickness of the soup here:

And last, but not least, clever nickname having his first taste:

It was pretty good, but needed something (there were no herbs or spices) that I just couldn’t put my finger on. I think cilantro would have been an excellent choice, however, I despise it. There is no way I would put that dread herb in my mouth voluntarily. I’ll most likely make a small batch and experiment sometime.

I think the next soup I make will be a leek and potato soup made on the same day as some fresh bread to use as a spoon.

I am waiting for the Cafe Paradiso cookbook to arrive. I ordered it online just a few days ago. It’s from a very good vegetarian restaurant in Cork, Ireland. Cute nickname, his sister, his brother and I went there for an early dinner one evening. Everything we had there was delicious and I can’t wait to get the cookbook to have their exact parsnip mash recipe.

Plans for the coming week:
Finish Ribby Cardi
Start paint stripping in living room
Order rat cage