Roasted Garlic

I don't know if everyone knows this about me but I'm a yard saler. You might call them tag sales, or garage sales, or even car boot sales as they call them in England. Once the nice weather hits here in New England my husband and I have our ritual. I go over the local paper Friday evening, writing down which ones we'll hit in order of time and distance. I grab my "yard sale" change purse, my cross body bag and off we go.

I love all things vintage. I'd much rather find that perfect piece of antique furniture and restore it myself before I'd buy something new.

We hit one particular yard sale and the first thing we noticed were the huge trees in the yard. I mean these suckers were massive. I snapped a pic with my cell phone.



We started talking to the elderly couple and the wife told me that she has lived on the land her whole life. She was raised in the farmhouse out back and bought the house they were in now for $1 from her grandparents. She told us she had the local college come to try and age the trees but the drill bit wasn't long enough. University of Rhode Island estimated that they were somewhere between 500 - 600 years old! Isn't that amazing?

We chatted away with them while I browsed around the garage and spotted a beautiful piece of pottery. I scooped it up the moment I saw it. Arthur Lavoie, the homeowner told me that he made it back in 1975. Sure enough when I flipped the pot over, there were his initials and '75 etched in the back. I asked if he was a potter and he said "no just a tinkerer" and I thought what a great thing to identify as. A tinkerer. I said "Arthur, I'll think of you every time I use it and Mrs. Lavoie said "oh how sweet". I love yard saleing, but I think I love the people and the stories I hear even more.

So I bought that beautiful pot from Arthur and I came home and I immediately roasted garlic in it cause roasted garlic don't need no reason.

Here's to old trees, sweet people and tinkerers everywhere.



Roasted Garlic
recipe from Lisa@ The Cutting Edge of Ordinary
PRINTABLE RECIPE

Full heads of garlic
olive oil

There really is no recipe I roast garlic like this quite often. It's great in sauces, smeared on crusty bread, added to sandwiches, in masked potatoes, stirred into soups, in salad dressings. It's just good stuff. Roasting really mellows the flavor and gives it a real earthy, nutty taste.

Oven to 350. Place the garlic heads in a ceramic pan, or you can just place them in a pie dish that you cover in aluminum foil. Chop the tops of the garlic off and drizzle a bit of olive oil into the center so it falls down into the cloves. Top it with a cover or cover with aluminum foil. Bake 25 mins then uncover and roast for another 10 - 15 minutes or under the cloves get soft and mushy. Let cool enough to touch then squeeze those babies out into a jar and keep refrigerated until you are ready to use them.