I try to make salsa...

A Friday night in August was Julia's birthday, so we invited my brothers that live nearby and my Mom, who couldn't come. I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but seeing as how my brothers are within 40 minutes of driving from me, I thought I might as well invite them.

On Independence Day, our Hispanic neighbors brought over soft tacos served traditional style, which entailed shredded pork, corn tortillas, cilantro, onions, red salsa and limes squeezed over the taco meat. It was a big hit. Laura wanted to find out how to make it, so I asked. Turns out the pork was from Famous Dave's (where the husband works), but the salsa was homemade.

The salsa recipe was to get several roma tomatoes, a hot pepper and a clove of garlic.

For the pork, I decided to try it myself using my brother Paul's famous (among our family) seasoning, some mesquite powder and sea salt. At Famous Dave's, they smoke their pork for eight hours, but I didn't have access to a smoker. So I put the pork with the seasonings in the slow cooker and let it go for about seven hours.

I then started the salsa. The recipe called for me to roast the tomatoes and pepper under the broiler until the skins can be peeled off, which I did. I then took my head of garlic and peeled the whole thing. The garlic I stuck in a blender with the pepper and blended. Then I added the tomatoes to the blender.

What was produced was very strong in the garlic department. It was good, but it was like garlic took over the flavor brigade. I think if you look closely in the above paragraph, you can easily tell where I went wrong with the salsa recipe.

I made the same mistake when I made chili one time. I had recently come up with a chili recipe that I modified from one in a cookbook. The recipe called for real garlic, but for the first two times I made it, I used dry garlic from a jar. At work, we were having a chili cook-off for charity so I decided to one up myself by entering my recipe. Then I got cocky and thought about using real garlic. The recipe called for two or three cloves of garlic, so I bought two whole heads of garlic, peeled them, cut up all the pieces and cooked them with the ground beef, as per the instructions. I was immediately done over by the intense garlic smell that smothered the room. I finished the recipe and took a taste. I was met with the most intense garlic tasting chili I've ever tasted.

I thought, "Is this right?"

I added more tomato sauce to try and dilute the taste, but it wasn't helping much. I put the chili in the freezer anyway and decided to test my luck at the cook off. That day came and karma dealt me a huge hand by allowing me to completely forget to bring my chili that day. By the time I remembered, it was two hours until the competition started. Seeing as how I lived 30 minutes away and the chili had been frozen when I made it a few days before. I knew there wouldn't be enough time to retrieve the chili, defrost it and warm it up again. So I gave up my chili table at the cook-off, which as you read later, was a very good thing. Unfortunately, I had made two large pots of it and had to finish it myself.

The problem was, every time I ate the chili, Laura would kick me out of the bedroom. She's very sensitive to garlic and can always tell when I've eaten it. Normally, she just groans and says, "You've been eating garlic haven't you?"

This time, she said as I neared her, "Jesus! What in the hell have you been eating? A garlic patch?"

I assured her that I was not.

"Well whatever you've been doing, you REEK of garlic! It's like it's oozing out of every pore and orifice!"

I would try to kiss her and she'd shy away with a "Aaaggghhh!"

I hate to waste things, so I tried to doctor the chili up some by draining out the juice and replacing it with plain tomato juice, but even that didn't help.

Each time I ate it, Laura would groan and kick me to the other bedroom. One time I managed to talk her into let me sleep in the bed after a bowl of chili, but I was jettisoned in the middle of the night when I turned over and breathed on her. That was too much for her to take.

"Out!" she exclaimed.

As I was walking out the door with my pillow, she grumbled, "And throw out that damn chili!"

So I did...

Back to the near past...

So my twin brother, my two older brothers and their wives came over.

Being a little paranoid about the salsa, I put out two different store bought salsas for the pork taco meat I had made, but if they had any qualms about the salsa, they didn't say anything as they ate it heartily. I barely had any left.

The next day, I was talking to my neighbor who had given me the recipe and I asked her if one clove of garlic meant the whole thing or just one piece of the garlic.

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "Just one of those pieces."

So instead of putting in one of those pieces, I had put something like 10 cloves of garlic into the salsa, which obviously accounted for the major garlic taste.

I called my brother, Bill, the next day to tell him about my mistake. He told me that when he got home and when he got within smelling distance of his wife, she took one whiff of him and exclaimed, "I don't know what you ate, but I want you to get away from me! It smells like you took a job at garlic factory."

She also said, "In fact, if this was our first date, there would be no chance I'd call you back with you smelling like that."

So it took me 37 years to learn that a clove of garlic means just one piece of the garlic and not the whole head. Now I just need to learn what in the hell oleo is and I'll be set.