Garlic Scapes!

What's a Garlic Scape you ask? It is what would be the flowering part of the garlic if we didn't clip it off to eat and keep the bulb edible too. I had heard about them before, but never had seen them used in a recipe. There's one good reason why, they are only available about 2 weeks out of the growing cycle.

Debra planted a lot of garlic back in late October, early November. It's been sprouting out of the ground since February. But just this last week of May the Garlic Scapes showed up. And the garlic bulb won't be ready for a few more weeks, and some varieties not until August!

Scapes also look cool, you cut them when they make a circle. The flavor is amazing...you can eat them raw! I mean, I've eaten strong garlic raw, but it's not pleasant and it's actually made me sick a few times. But Scapes are mild and sweet and can be used just like a green onion.

Yesterday (Thursday) at the Saint Andrew Farmers' Market, our chef Travis Miller was making a stir fry to sample with RiverSong Farm's sugar snap peas and garlic scapes and Misty Meadows's candy apple onions, so good. And he was sampling the scapes raw! Just last night, Tom and I used them as a topping on our pizza.

We may have them for 1 more week, but it's uncertain. This is why I love eating seasonally, you really appreciate what you get when you get it, but also the taste is so much better, because it's fresh, that it's worth the wait.

Picture to come.