Garlic, Garlic, and more Garlic

A couple years ago, we were originally planning to take a vacation and drive across the country to the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.  Finances, new jobs, and lack of vacation time, etc. caused that particular adventure remain on our "to do someday" list, and we instead decided to check out a more local event.  So, last weekend, we finally made a trip to the annual Southern Vermont Garlic & Herb Festival in Bennington, VT.

We knew that it wouldn't be anything like what goes on in Gilroy, and that's quite okay.  Bennington, VT, after all, isn't the "garlic capital of the world" that Gilroy is  ;)  What we experienced was in most ways exactly what we expected  and definitely worth the modest admission fee, but in one aspect a tad disappointing.  Here's the scoop....

Guided by volunteers wearing garlic hats and waving pool noodles (cute touch), we parked our car on the huge grassy field, and proceeded to the gates where we paid the $5 each to enter.  In exchange, we received neat-o hand stamps:

Seriously, I thought the stamp was cool.  I'm an oddball, whatever.  =P

As advertised, there was everything from garlic ice cream to garlic jelly, pickled garlic, roasted garlic, garlic braids, and, of course, plain garlic bulbs of every variety for sampling and purchase.  There was even a vendor making garlic lemonade (which unfortunately we not get to try).  There were demonstrations happening throughout the day (braiding, planting, a Home Depot kids workshop, etc), but we didn't get involved in that particular stuff.  There were also plenty of non-garlic-centric items available for sample and/or purchase -- such as arts & crafts, foods & beverage products, and even one vendor selling Vitamix blenders.  Essentially, it was like a giant farmers' market, with if I am remembering correctly, at least 10 long rows of tents all set up selling their various wares.  Being that it's Vermont, there were also lots of maple-based items.  There was a separate section where you could buy freshly prepared food, and in that same area was a band playing and a hay maze for the kiddos.  Finally, there was an absolutely huge and very, very interesting antique store on the grounds - I think they own the land on which the festival took place.  We spent a good amount of time browsing in there.

Anyways, we walked around most of the festival grounds, sampling things here and there, before making decisions and going back to purchase stuff.  We tried....

Various garlic and other oils and dips.  All very delicious.

Garlic fudge.  Quite interesting.

Black Garlic Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies.  We got the second to last bag of them.
They weren't bad at all, and the garlic seemed to give them a very moist, creamy texture.

Roasted Garlic Ice Cream.  Look, you can see the bits of garlic in there.
It was tasty, and I would absolutely eat this again.  It kind of reminded me of
one of the Tastefully Simply dips.  Weird, I know.  But it really was unexpectedly good.

And the be all and end all of stuff we sampled that day -- Deep Fried Garlic Cloves!!!
Oh.  My.  God.  So.  Awesome.  'Nuff.  Said.
I had expected them to be breaded or battered before, but they weren't, and it wasn't necessary at all.
Imagine, though, if they were?  Wow.  Maybe that will have to be an at-home foodventure sometime.

We tasted lots of other stuff, too, but just couldn't take pictures of it all.

Around noontime, we moseyed on over to the prepared foods/hay maze/band area and got lunch.  This, as I mentioned above, is where the disappointment of the day came into play.  I would have expected the things that people were cooking and selling here to be more, I don't know, special?  Some examples of things that were being served, but that I thought were too common, were garlic naan at the Indian food vendor, garlic sausages, and the thing I ordered and was not happy with: a garlic hamburger, which amounted to nothing more than a hamburger with some garlic slapped on top as if it were relish.  Boooo.  Definitely not Gilroy.

Overall, it was a nice time and I am glad that we went, but I see no need to make the three and a half hour drive to attend this event again.  Ironically, even though we are huge garlic fans and very much enjoyed the garlic-y treats that we sampled that day, nothing that we bought to take home (for ourselves) was garlic.  We bought a bottle of maple liqueur (soooo good), a jar of strawberry habanero jelly (wait until you see what we did with that last night!), two other jars of jelly from that same vendor, spicy pickles for a friend, fudge (normal, not garlic) for another friend, and a garlic sampler for a third friend.  I also went back to one craftsman to pick up a wicked cool steampunk-ish pepper grinder that I spotted earlier in the day, but by the time I got there, it was gone.  Oh, well.  In the end, the shopping bag ended up pleasantly heavy with our spoils.  :)