Early in our marriage, we lived on the third floor in an apartment. It was across the hall and to the right of the stairs. Next to us was a storage room, on the other side was a guy who was never around. Directly across the hall from our apartment was the laundry room, stairs to the right and a flight attendant whos’ mail complete with Victoria’s secret catalog was usually mixed up with our mail. It was a very convenient apartment.
We decided to spend a day at the Renaissance Festival. A day of time period themed festivities. Basically, a rural state fair where Cosplay actors went around calling everyone me lady, me lord and whatnot. Some vendors dressed in costumes accosted festival goers by hawking stuff. “Buy a stick, the pickle is free!” Clever. But I digress.
We found a booth selling individual sized spinach pies. They were delicious, and we each enjoyed a second. My new bride asked if she could get the recipe. And sure enough withing ten minutes she had the recipe in hand! It would be weeks later before we tried making our own spinach pie back in the apartment.
We looked forward to this day in making our spinach pies. It seemed straight forward and easy enough. Though getting the garlic out of the peeling was time consuming and putzy. We did have a debate on what is meant by one clove of garlic. Being young in our twenties, newly married and not worldly in the know, we took a guess.
One clove of garlic must surely mean the garlic in hand. How wrong we were.
Almost immediately we could smell garlic wafting out of the oven. Soon, our apartment was heavy and thick with the aroma of garlic. When the pies were done and ready for tasting, we could not abide the taste. Now, we enjoy garlic. Probably more so than most. But this was too too much. She spit and tossed her individual pie out. Not wanting to disappoint my new bride, I said it was kinda’ good, but heavy on the garlic and finished it.
She asked me to take it all out in the garbage. I happily obliged. I grabbed a beer and the garbage bag and headed downstairs. The garbage bins were across the parking lot, behind the garages in the back lot. I took my time washing down the garlic treatment with my beer. Which never really tasted good. The beer was too garlicky. I believe I even was sweating garlic. Opening
the building’s door, I hit headstrong into a wall of garlic aroma. This wall was difficult to penetrate, and I debated in leaving for my folk’s place for the night. No, I must be strong for her. The higher I climbed the staircase, the stronger the pungency of garlic became. It was all but unbearable opening our apartment door. Garlic was so strong my eyes watered.
It took weeks to rid the building of garlic. And we learned a few things. One clove of garlic does not equal the entire bulb. And a good way to rid the building of inhabitants, cook lots of garlic. It was a long time before we enjoyed anything with garlic. Even the spinach pies.
