Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Garlic and Somersaults

Yep, two totally unrelated topics, but things that have been on my mind recently.

First garlic.  I love garlic.  I land in the camp that "there can never be too much garlic."

However I understand that fresh garlic has a certain SLED.

For those of you who don't work at the same company that I do, SLED is our acronym for  "Shelf Life Expiration Date."  SLED is very important in our world of health and beauty consumer packaged goods. We also concern ourselves with a Pre-Exp - that date before the SLED beyond which we should not ship goods to our customers.  I am not trying to sound flippant here.  It is important.  As a consumer, expiration dates matter.

But back to garlic.  While your individual head of garlic may not have a SLED stamped on the outer skin, it is fresh, so therefore, it expires...dries up...loses its garlickiness.

Why do you care about this, Deb?

Oh!  I failed to mention that, didn't I?!  Here is why....

A FRIEND TOLD ME RECENTLY THAT SHE TRIED MAKING THE GUINNESS SHEPHERD'S PIE RECIPE I POSTED ON HERE IN MARCH FOR ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!
How FUN is that????!!!!  I was so pleased to hear her tell me this!

However, she said that hers didn't taste quite like she remembered from tasting the one at work.  But she also said that she didn't have garlic, so she used a little bit of garlic powder.  I understand that, but it can also be a little hard to substitute the powder for the fresh.  The powder is really designed to be used in meat rubs and those kinds of seasoning mixes rather than as a direct substitute for fresh garlic.

So the more we talked, I mentioned to her that buying the jarred garlic like this would be a better option than garlic powder and it has a much longer SLED than fresh garlic.

While I've never used frozen garlic, S&A keep it on hand and have had very good results with it.  So this is another really good option.
This sweet lady is busy raising a real cutie of a little man, so she has much better things to do with her time and mind and heart than worry about whether she has fresh garlic on hand or not, so I thought a couple of pics might help her the next time she's at the store.

That's all for garlic.  Now for somersaults.

While little J-man isn't doing any somersaults tonight - it's a little hard with the nebulizer tubes and all -
- he has figured out that he likes to do them!  He can't exactly say "somersault" but he puts his head down and his butt up and giggles until you come and flip him over and then he giggles even more!  I got to do this with him a few dozen times on Sunday afternoon when J-man wasn't feeling as bad as he is today.

But that got me thinking...when was the last time Mimi did a somersault?  Could she still do one?

Only one way to find out, right?  So sure enough, I put my head down and my butt up and pushed off.  And yep, Mimi did a somersault!  I was really, really, really, really, really dizzy afterwards, but it was fun!

That's all!  Feel better, little J-man!  We have some somersaults to get back to!

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