Monday, July 10, 2006

More Taste Testing

In the grocery store we usually go to, there is a large table where the grocery store piles green leafy vegetables and spices. This table usually has cilantro (most of the year) some form of bok choy and some very bitter large-leafed item. (There are many choices of vegetables under this last one. We keep trying things that we think are different plants only to discover that while they may have different names, they all seem to taste very similar.)
As with the rest of the produce section, with the arrival of summer this area now has a lot more choices. Every week we seem to find something new exciting item.
This week Cara went to the store on her own and found a long thin-stemmed item that sort of looked like green onions but was much thicker, flatter, yellower, and smelled very interestingly.
But what could it be?
Unable to figure out which of the 4 signs above that area of the table actually applied to the item in hand, Cara decided to just buy some and try to figure it out at home. Maybe it was lemon grass! Michael was often looking for fresh lemon grass. Maybe lemony was the interesting smell.

It wasn't until Michael spent some time deciphering the label that the produce-weighing ladies put on the package that we discovered it was actually yellow garlic chives. You can see a picture of them here. Do not be fooled by the regular green colored garlic chives - those, my friend, were not what we purchased.

These neat herbs have a garlic flavor and a chive texture. They also smell very, very strongly. Cara thinks they smell like exotic garlics. Michael thinks they smell like armpits. Depending on your opinion, this highly influences how you might react to realizing that it only takes one night before the entire refrigerator, as well as all the food contained within, to smell exactly like the garlic chives.

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