The Garlic Festival

Honestly, who thinks of going to a garlic festival? Apparently A LOT of people (a little over 82,000 to be *sort of* exact). And me...apparently me.

The Bay Area is full of strange festivals and traditions, particularly in San Francisco, but this garlic festival is an institution. The community of Gilroy hosted the first garlic festival in 1978 expecting 5,000 attendees and over 15,000 showed up. The hype is still there. Trust me, it was packed. Since its inception, the festival has raised more than $10M for local charities, because let's be honest, who doesn't want to eat for a good cause?! 

Day of, Laura, one of my co-workers (and friends - yay co-op!) brilliantly suggested that we get there right as it was opening to miss the traffic. As we were driving in, we could smell the garlic wafting at least a mile out. We parked the car in the designated lot and hopped on the bus to go to the festival. When we were standing in line for tickets I heard some people behind us say that they had waited in line for over an hour last year to just get on the bus from the parking lot (praise Laura). 

Alright, so let's get to the important stuff. GARLIC BREAD. In case you didn't get that, I repeat, GARLIC BREAD. 

There it is in all it's glory. Pretty great, I know. 

Now you might be thinking 

I present to you: Garlic Ice Cream. I'll be the first one to say it - it sounds disgusting. Truthfully though, it was pretty decent. I would give it a 6/10. It had the sweetness at the front end with just a bit of garlic bite at the finish. I don't think I'll be buying a pint of it anytime soon, but count me in for another free cone. 

There were plenty of other things to do at the festival (aka when we got full and needed a breather). We watched some live Chopped-style cook-offs, saw some people competing in a garlic braid race, wandered through many artisan's stands, and bought some cotton candy grapes (yes, they do taste like cotton candy). 

ALSO, this hat. Just thought you should see this. 

If you haven't had enough already, here's a pic of my fellow garlicky co-ops and me:

 And here's a pic of a fire breathing garlic (aka us after we left the festival):

Number 1 regret? I didn't get garlic fries. Don't repeat my mistakes. Always get garlic fries.

All in all, it was a pretty great day. Thanks for the gorgeous sunshine, Cali. Stay weird.

-xoxo-
Kate