Experiencing The Gilroy Garlic Festival

Yesterday I spent a big chunk of my day attending the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Gilroy is known as the garlic capital of the world, and the festival is quite a big deal around here. It started in 1979, and the event has raised over $9.7 million for local charities since it started. They anticipated 100,000 people to attend the 3-day event this weekend – which is over double the population of the town!

I had already planned on checking the festival out with my hubby to see what all the buzz is about, but I also had another reason for going: A couple of days ago, I was given an assignment at the event for the newspaper I’ve been doing some freelance writing for. I was very official with my press badge!

I wore a long skirt in hopes of minimizing any attention drawn to my boot. It was kind of funny when a few people at the festival ran into me with baby strollers, noticed my boot, and then said, “Oh my gosh I’m sooo sorry!” Ha.

Besides live music, cooking competitions, and food demonstrations, the festival was packed with food stands, with everything from pesto pasta, smoothies, popcorn and pie stands…

…to the festival staples of garlic fries and garlic ice cream. 

There were some food there that made me say “yuck!” – notably the cajun stand with crazy long lines of people anxious to try kangaroo, gator and frog legs.

Adam tried a plate from a BBQ stand and ordered what he thought would be a typical chicken sandwich. He was surprised when it would up being these ginormous pieces of BBQ chicken with 2 slices of bread on the side.

The food item I had to write about for the newspaper was a new dish – garlic fried calamari. The irony of a vegetarian healthy living blogger writing about deep fried fish was not lost on me, but I mostly just had to chat with some people about how they liked the dish. You can check out the article here.

I interviewed the dish’s creator for the piece, who was a super sweet man that insisted on me trying the calamari. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t eat calamari, so Adam wound up with a free calamari dish. He gave it a big thumbs up!

As expected, there wasn’t exactly a plethora of healthy options available, but I did see a couple of things that weren’t artery-clogging food, like garlic edamame, grilled corn on the cob and a Pasta Prima stand giving out ravioli samples.

I’m a fan of both their heirloom tomato ravioli and the spinach & ricotta ones!

The festival had a big pavilion of local wineries that attendees could taste from. I would have loved to do some wine tastings, but after walking around in the hot sun for hours, I needed something cold. It’s times like these I wish I liked beer, because there was a huge beer garden at the event… but then I saw a sign for spiked wine sundaes, and I was all about it.

Adam and I tried a blackberry sundae, which was just vanilla ice cream and blackberry wine. The wine wasn’t great, but it was refreshing. Plus they had water misters in the pavilion spritzing people, which felt glorious!

I was all about dessert at the festival, because the other thing I tried there was a chocolate covered frozen fruit kabob. Adam and I split one that had strawberry, banana and peach pieces. It was yummy!

Being that I was at a garlic festival and didn’t eat anything with garlic, I nabbed a giant bulb to take home.

When I first moved to the Bay Area, my girlfriend Angi, who used to live in San Francisco and has been to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, said that I should check out the festival, buy garlic there, come home and roast it, spread it on fresh bread, then eat it outside while enjoying some alcoholic beverages… and that’s exactly what I did!

I had actually never roasted garlic before, and I followed these directions. Since I don’t like to eat things that are too garlicky, I mashed probably only 4  of the cloves, mixed it with a bit of light butter, then spread it on an entire loaf of French bread. Between the bread, cheese, and fruit, this meal was nothing short of awesome.

Oh, and the wine… I just adore buttery chardonnay. J Lohr is one of my favorites – a very yummy but not too pricey Californian winery (I’ve been there before and definitely want to visit again)!

Harley obviously had to be in the middle of things while I was snapping a few shots of dinner.

She just loves to photobomb my food pics, and then when I was to take a picture of her, she deliberately looks away. Nutty pup!

While my eats yesterday were indulgent, they were worth it. The festival was a fun time and something different to do. I enjoy experiencing things that are unique to an area, and the Gilroy Garlic Festival is just that.