An Ode to Garlic Scapes

The best part about the summer is the fresh produce. I take such pleasure from going to a new farmstand and buying some vegetables there, or washing a bunch of blueberries, putting them in a bowl and eating a big handful. It's so refreshing. (OK, OK, here is where you mock me for living the "Stuff White People Like" stereotype -- locavore, organically grown, etc -- but this actually comes from my dad, who took me to farmstands starting in elementary school; he still does. I have shopping-for-produce cred!)

Anyway, my favorite discovery this summer is the garlic scape, which one stand at the farmers' market near my job convinced me to try. Technically, it's the green shoot removed from the top of garlic bulbs, and tastes like a scallion-garlic hybrid, with a slight reminder of string bean. There's a crunch and then a strong zing of flavor (and then, my girlfriend would say, my breath becomes stinky; I continue to eat them). I put them in salads and also eat them plain (though generally advise against the latter unless you have audacious taste buds), and actually enjoyed eating a scape and then eating a strawberry -- they both made my tongue tingle. (My girlfriend, [making her second appearance in one post!] said the combination sounds like something Richard Blais from Top Chef's Season 4 would try, so, Richard, if you're reading, I grant you permission to see how it works. Just get back to me.) A woman in line at the farmstand Friday suggested putting a few into mashed potatoes, which I'm going to try this week. The excitement that is my life!

And on "Stuff White People Like," this post sent me there for the first time in a few months. Its entries are still very funny -- Girls With Bangs," "Statistics" and "Menus with No Decimal Places" all cracked me up -- but, as further proof of the downside of the Internet's light-speed hype cycles, do you hear anything about it anymore, six months after it was a huge phenomenon? When its author signed a book deal, it sparked lots of coverage, but apparently the book was already released? Talk about going in with a bang and leaving with a whimper.