Weekend Plans Post: On Black Garlic
My boss recently had a business trip. He’s been under a lot of deadlines lately and it’s only recently that everything stopped hitting him on all sides. Going out on a trip was just the ticket, I thought, to give him a little bit of a vacation. Sure, you have to work 8 or 9 hours a day, but after that you’re *FREE*. You don’t have to take care of the house, you don’t have to mow the lawn, you don’t have to run errands. Once you get off of work, that time is *YOURS*. Go out to eat a leisurely dinner. Instead of taking a 5 minute shower, take a 25 minute shower. Put on some Pink Floyd and just stand under the jets! Go to bed early!
It’s not a *VACATION* vacation, but it is a little bit of time in this weird limbo where you are in a new and strange place… but without many obligations that you would have had back home.
Well, of course, he got there and realized that everything was nutso. The previous guy who was out there to do a job (not me!) kind of failed, entirely, to do it. So the 5 8 hour days my boss was supposed to have turned into 3 14-hour days, one 10-hour day, and then, finally on Friday, an 8.
He was looking forward to coming home and relaxing.
Well, this happened during the same week that Maribou was out of town visiting her besties on the coast and so I had been batching it. It was the last bachelor weekend and he sent me a text saying that it was supposed to be Saturday but he was still pretty stressed out. We talked about how we needed to have a game night and how we needed to have a pot luck and how we just needed to all get together and *COOK* something and… well, Sunday rolls around and he asks me if it’s good to have Maribou back and I told him “She gets back on Tuesday!”
And, next thing you know, we hammer out that he has buns and burgers but no mozzarella and no black garlic and, if I was willing to go out and find those things, we could, you know, make burgers *TONIGHT*.
And so I went to Whole Foods to get supplies. Fresh Mozzarella. A big ol’ yellow onion. Some of the small batch artisanal mayonnaise that has a little guy with a monocle on the front of the jar. I couldn’t find black garlic. I asked the produce guy and he said “I’ll check the back!” and, nope. No dice. Got up to the register. “Did you find everything?” “You guys didn’t have any black garlic.” “You’re the third person today to tell me that.”
So I got on the google. Of course, it was at Wal-Mart. Not the depressing Super Wal-Mart that feels like an open-ended psychology experiment. Not the Wal-Mart off the main strip in the rough part of town (which, while less depressing, is a hair more stabby). Nope, it was at the Wal-Mart up in Briargate. This Wal-Mart is not the depressing one. This one is the one that can only be described as “The Fancy Schmancy Wal-Mart”. It’s the one that has different variants of organic peaches as you walk in the front. The one that has enthusiastic people smiling. The one that has enough checkers and multiple open checkout lanes. The one that sometimes has samples.
I found the spice aisle and there it was, in all its beauty.
I grabbed a couple of jars and then went over to make what I found out was a Bob’s Burger’s recipe: Bet It All On Black.
Before doing anything, we grabbed some bread and spread a light spread of the black garlic on it and tasted it…
It’s subtle. If you don’t usually like garlic, you might like this. Regular garlic is a punch in the nose. This was more of a fingertip put on the tip of your nose while someone then says “honk honk”.
So we made an aioli with the mayo and the black garlic and added some sriracha. AND HOLY COW THIS WAS THE BEST AIOLI I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY *LIFE*.
We grilled up the burgers, assembled them (I put an onion slice on mine) and ate them and said “holy cow, I can’t believe how good this burger is” multiple times between bites. Then he sat at his computer and I sat on the couch and immediately fell into a nap.
So all that to say: As a condiment, I was disappointed by the black garlic. (Maybe I’ll want to try it mixed in with some olive oil and black pepper as a bread dip.)
As an ingredient? HOLY COW GET YOURSELF SOME OF THIS.
I’m not a mayo person. But I very much am a black garlic/sriracha aioli person. We talked about those burgers for the rest of the week. Heck, I’m telling you about them right now. If you’ve got an upcoming bar-b-que and you’re idly wondering if you want to do something special or stick to the basics? Lemme suggest that you get yourself a jar of this and make some of the aioli. You will have people telling you about it for a week afterwards.
As for this weekend… well, maybe I’ll make those burgers again. Dang, they were good.
So… what’s on your docket?
Very special to have such a relationship with your boss.
My company is small, only about 40 people, and my team of 10 work very closely together. But we have the atmosphere of a corporate; the people are decent and ehtical and friendly and professional, but there are no personal relationships between employees, never mind between employees and managers.
The company was spawned from HP. Guess it shows even 15 years later…Report
I’ve reached the point in my life where the only new friends I make are co-workers.
(I define “friends” as “people that I cook with/for and who do the same for me”.)
I can’t remember the last time I made a non-work friend…Report
That’s why I can’t understand why so many people are absolutely ecstatic at the thought of permanent remote working. I mean yeah I don’t miss my commute either, but frankly work has gobbled it all up in anycase. But if we study virtually, attend zoom gym and work remotely – where are we supposed to make friends? I seem to be holding a minority opinion on this.
PS I Like your qualifying criteria for a friendship… works for me.Report
My colleagues aren’t as much my friends as I once thought they were (I reached out to a couple when I was in an absolute pit of isolation mid-pandemic, and never heard back) but still, I very much prefer in-office working to remote working. I can only assume the remote workers have a bigger house than I do and didn’t have to repurpose a corner of their living room.
I also did not like how work *psychologically* invaded my home. I don’t think my poor sleep during 2020 was JUST worrying about the pandemic; I think part of it was the feeling that my house was also now my workplace and there was NO ESCAPE.
as soon as I could go back to the office/lab, I did, and it made a big difference. For me home is for being at home, work is for working, and the two streams should not be crossed.
I’m hoping once we get back more fully in-person, maybe the work-friendships will rekindle but there are a couple people I was friendly with who went 100% online for this whole academic year and I missed them. I assume they didn’t miss me, though 🙁Report
“I also did not like how work *psychologically* invaded my home.”
Oh, me too! I was just doing remote desktop from my home PC to my work PC. It worked well because I already had a great setup at home, but it really sucked the joy out of all leisure time spent at the PC (gaming, watching movies, listening to music, whatever). I was glad to go back to work.Report
PERMANENT REMOTE WORKING ON FRIDAYS! And on Mondays until 10AM.Report
But… but… Look, when Marketing decided that they would do casual Fridays and dress like the engineers dressed all week, it set off a competition. We won because they couldn’t get their VP to bless shorts and Hawaiian shirts.Report
And a good thing too, considering the engineers’ possible next steps.Report
Graduation Party tonight for the adopted cousin (adopted at 16, was homeless, absent dad, junkie mom, etc.). She is 19 now, but off to college in the fall, so lots to celebrate.
Northwest Trek tomorrow.
Celebrate my birthday and father’s day on Sunday (and I have to finish my college app for the fall program).Report
If it’s not emulsified within the Aioli DOC, then it’s just spicy Mayo.
I bet the black garlic is an Umami bomb… will have to experiment some.
This weekend we have a wedding … we’re at the age where our friend’s children are getting married… sometimes these are children whose diapers we once changed and who are practically siblings to our own children… sometimes they are barely known children of friends. This one is the latter. Still lovely, but makes you realize that the whole affair takes the entire day, and I’m like… is their an express version for friends of the parents?
Since Saturday is usually date night (see above), we decided to mix-it-up and go wild on Thursday by going… and I’m not making this up… to a MOVIE at a theater (technically an Alamo). First movie since, well, you know. We saw the new Ryan Reynolds movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek and it delivered *exactly* what that movie was going to deliver. Plus a twist and about 100 extra MF bombs than you might have expected… like parody levels of MF, MFers. Really more of a cable movie (which I’ll watch another 20 times while I’m puttering around on my computer)… but you know, until Dune comes out – what are you gonna do?Report
We made it in one of those magic bullet blenders.
It worked.Report
Riffing on the Champagne/Sparkling wine thing. I’m sure it was delicious 🙂Report
OH! Of course!Report
Slowly circling around deep cleaning my house after almost a year of doing the bare minimum cleaning (because I was probably depressed during the pandemic, and just lacked the executive function to, and also, who was going to come to my house to see how bad it was?).
got the kitchen and part of the living room done, but in the dining room got derailed reorganizing my approximately 100 cookbooks, which live on a bank of bookshelves in the dining room.I have to make space for the German and traditional-Mexican cookbook I ganked from my mother’s when she said “I’m just gonna donate these books, any you want?”
tomorrow is another workday at church, but that’s just the morning. Also if I can get myself out of bed early enough I should mow the lawn before thatReport
Also if I can get myself out of bed early enough I should mow the lawn before that
When we moved from the traditional inner-ring Denver suburb to the townhouse in Fort Collins, I ran the numbers on exterior work (food for the grass, chemicals to kill the weeds, tree maintenance, paint every so many years, etc) and decided that what I was spending and what the townhouse HOA wanted was a wash. Tuesday mornings are becoming one of my favorite times. I can sit on the front porch and read or write on the laptop, while watching the hired crew take care of the grass and weeds.
The other day I added things up and including the time when I was responsible for Dad’s grass because of the amount he traveled, I’ve spent just at a half-century shackled by the needs of lawns and bushes.Report
Perhaps I am the only one here, but to be honest the important differences between being retired on Wednesday and being retired on Saturday are (a) some businesses aren’t open on Saturday so I have to keep track and (b) the bicycle trails and groceries are much more crowded on Saturday.Report
As a college prof who (some semesters) has a weekday afternoon totally open (no classes or office hours), I often designate that as my errand-day instead of Saturdays because places here are totally slammed on Saturdays and often the people working counters are grumpy (well, I suppose you would be, too, if you were slammed).
I don’t teach summers so I can go do grocery shopping on a Thursday if I want, or go file paperwork somewhere on a Monday afternoon. It’s much nicer and I feel like working people should get a (staggered, so not everyone has the same day) weekday AT LEAST half off for this purposeReport