The Cleveland Garlic Festival

Garlic. If you love it like we do, then you had to go to The Cleveland Garlic Festival at The North Union Farmers Market September 10-11. The festival is in its second year and is located on Shaker Square. Despite a little rain, plenty of people were there. We roamed the tents on both sides, sampling lots of garlic goodness, and buying items that wowed us. There were also cooking demonstrations using, of course, GARLIC, as well as live music on two stages. Here are a few of our favorites:

• Sergio's Sarava's Garlic Shrimp: Sergio's really took the theme to heart and made a savory shrimp with big garlic flavor and presented it on a bed of garlic rice to boot! This one really hit the mark on celebrating garlic. Loved it!
  
• Most interesting – Garlic Ice Cream by Mitchell's: we had to try it... everyone should try it… it actually did work! As a side note, they also had the most unbelievable caramel and salt ice cream. Just go try it, your jaw will drop.
  
• Roasted Garlic Salsa from Blaze Gourmet (so big and flavorful - one of the best salsas out there, and it's local!)
  
• Garlic Expressions Salad Dressing (yep, it's local too - we've been buying this for years.)
  
• The Olive and the Grape's many Garlic Olive Oils, Cooking Oils, and spice packets. The spices they incorporate are not the basic stuff, these delightful blends are carefully scrutinized with a passion for the highest quality, healthiest ingredients from all over the world.
  
• Whole Foods' extremely pungent, spicy garlic hummus. That says it all. Whoa.

Our only criticism is that there were some who showcased their regular fare without doing something creative with garlic. We expected everything to be garlic something. Hence, Garlic Festival. One of those things that's basically implied, if you don't love garlic, then don't come. So we challenge participants next year to bring out the garlic. Show us and amaze us with what you can do with it… I'm sure we garlic lovers will applaud the effort!