Spring Garlic

Garlic pokes up through colder ground and shorter days than a lot of its garden compadres. Even in my yard's procrastinating Spring, only a day after Equinox, the vee-creased shoots are ankle high. This is in a new bed enriched with fireplace ash, maybe a hundred or so plants. There are a few odd rows here and there in the yard, and of course a few heads I missed last fall sprouting green tonsures.


Contrary to the Fall-planting orthodoxy, I pulled up and split up some of the volunteer knobs, replanting willy nilly just a couple of weeks ago. Others I let be until a hankering for scallions or scapes, maybe an autumnal bulbil, brings me back. Freebies for the rest of the year, with the extra spice only disorthodoxy can summon.


Meanwhile, inside the house, the cloves awaken. As soon as the mature heads are pulled from the soil, garlicians struggle to make them last as long as possible. A cool dry garage and some jars of olive oil did the trick this year. At least until the Solstice, when even under roof and Winter's cloudy grey, the cloves hear the call of the lengthening days and begin their six-month stretch. Either I've selected better keepers or I was lucky this time around, because by this time in previous years, all the dry stuff had long since decided to be a new plant.

The last of the dried cloves, just now sprouting, don't inspire foodies. They're yellowing and getting a little soft; the only crisp part is a green shoot through the heart of each one, reaching out the top for light. Meanwhile, at the other end, octopodic roots begin to reach out, hoping to get their tentacles into some soil. Some people would plant them, others (under the thrall of Autumnist dogma?) would waste them, or at best relegate them to the compost. 


But being frugal, I use them up. Sliced, each piece is an eye with a green pupil, a look I like. Then again, doing nothing more than peeling them (easy, at this late stage) and tossing them in whatever happens to be in the works works as well. A recent desire to cut out the chemicals and other afflictions of canned beans, I've been buying them dried, and cooking them in a crock pot. A head of past-prime garlick cloves added to this gestation is a fine and nearly effortless addition. I will end this entry with proof, in the form of another of my so-simple-it's-not-even-a-recipe recipes:

Crocked Garlic and Beans

• Clean and rinse 1 pound of dried beans
• Peel however much garlic you want
• Put it all in a crock-pot with water
• Turn it on
• Wait

While you are waiting, decide whether you want to add anything else. You'll have hours to think of extra ingredients, such as: beer, salt, schmaltz, celery,... You should probably stop obsessing about bean cuisine right about now. It's unbecoming of simple staples, which have humble souls that are put off by high-falutingness (but tolerant of flatusness). Just let 'em cook until you are satisfied with their mushiness. And turn whatever epicurean inspiration that might strike toward something to go with your crock o beans.