Garlic — packed with disease-slaying antioxidants and other magical properties that have been shown to do everything from reduce cancerous cells to help ease headaches to teach Billy how to tie his shoes to make the dullest dish on earth taste like a night in Venice, dancing under a full moon — is by far the most important component in my arsenal of vampire fighting weapons. Battling vampires, as any good Catholic / individual of Eastern European descent / viewer of the WB can tell you, is an essential, if vaguely tiresome, part of the human condition.
My husband and his people, Methodist / of German and Scandinavian descent / viewer of dull educational shows on PBS, have never been exposed to the grim and rugged reality of a full-throttled assault of the blood-sucking midnight howlers.
Stephen and his fair-skinned blond and bonny clan have merrily skipped across centuries, through fang and cape-free prairies dappled by a bright and cheery sun; fairies leaped along with them, flinging sparkling sprinkles of sugar dust in their wake.
He fails to understand, in his vast and wide-eyed innocence, why I, and my people, (who have done battle with the pallid, cackling clan of coffin thumpers since time immemorial) feel the need to load down everything we put in our mouths with mounds of the effulgent stuff: raw, roasted, sauteed, pickled; softneck, rocambole, purple stripe. We love the stink rose in all of its various forms. Stephen just thinks it stinks.
If you told me, 10 years ago, that I would marry the sort of man who didn’t buy garlic in bulk as a matter of course, never mind avoided the stuff, I would have whipped out my crucifix and doused you in a bath of holy water. I would have assumed that only a member of the dark and toothy side would dare to utter such a patently ridiculous, libelous and seditious statement.
But love is blind. In our case, it also suffers from anosmia.
Our opposing world views have led to a few serious clashes in the kitchen. One notable incident involved Stephen wrestling me to the ground in a vain attempt to prevent me from adding a fifth clove of garlic to a giant, bubbling vat of Venison Stew. (The fool! He chucked the head I had wedged protectively between my knees in our overflowing garbage can and removed the offending bag from our kitchen; but while he was gone, I merely located my back-up stash under the kale in the crisper — the last place he’d ever venture — and threw in another three cloves out of pure, unadulterated spite.)
The recipes I cranked out this Sunday were part of my over-arching aim to find common ground on the violent battle ground to which our taste buds have sent us.
Behold, the sweet/savory, herb-packed Mediterranean Meatballs and the Weird Fusion Marinated Portobello Mushrooms That Totally Work. Continue reading
Sunday in the Kitchen 