Have you ever heard or read where we're not suppose to eat the green shoot inside our garlic cloves?  Well, it's true what they say, that premature green shoot produces a bitter flavor when it's cooked.  Now you can remove that premature shoot and use the remaining clove as intended, if you don't have fresher garlic.

However, before you start cutting, try growing your own garlic chives.  They are super easy to grow right from your kitchen window with just a little water in the bottom of a cup or bowl.

Garlic chives are very mild in flavor.  Initially, the bite of garlic that hits your palate is unmistakably garlic but it doesn't hang long, compared to eating a fresh garlic clove that will stay with you for hours and hours, even after you've brushed your teeth.

HOW TO GET STARTED
Place the budding clove or whole bulb in a small cup or bowl.  Using a clear container really helps you see when the water needs to be changed and you can watch the roots grow.  Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the cup and touches just the bottom of the cloves.  Do not submerge the cloves or the water will become cloudy, smelly and the cloves will begin to rot.  Not good.

The garlic cloves will begin producing roots very quickly after a few days.  It's good practice to change out the little bit water in the cup or bowl when it begins to look slightly cloudy, which is every couple of days.  Soil is not required because the green shoots rising up are getting all their nutrients from the individual cloves.  Plenty of light and fresh water will do nicely.

You can begin harvesting garlic chives when the shoots are 3-inches tall; there could be 2 to 3 shoots growing out of each clove.  Try not to remove more than a third of the growing blades.  The green blades capture energy from the sun to grow taller.  Much like a green onion, garlic chives grow from within the a single sprout.  Cutting the main sprout back down to the clove will not produce more shoots.  Chives will grow as tall as 10-inches if left alone.

HOW TO HARVEST
Use sharp kitchen scissors to snip off just what you need for your recipe. Two-inches of a chive blade can roughly make 1 tablespoon of chives.

HOW TO USE GARLIC CHIVES
Ideally, their flavor is best appreciated eaten fresh.  Garlic chives are excellent on top of baked potatoes, green salads, vegetable salads, or stirred into egg salads, pasta salads, dips, and as a quick garnish over hummus or guacamole.

ALTERNATIVE WAY TO GROW GARLIC CHIVES
Choose a sunny spot, if you have it, a little shade is okay.  You can plant garlic cloves directly in the soil about an inch deep and see chives growing up after a couple of weeks.  If you want to move the sprouted cloves from indoors to the outside, they should transplant into the soil just fine.  Plant each clove 4 to 6-inches apart.  Keep the soil moist, not soggy, for a couple of weeks, allowing time for the roots to adjust to taking up water from the soil on their own.  Garlic is tough and easy to grow. Harvest the chives the same as directed above, removing only a third of the blade tops or remove one whole blade, if other blades are growing out of the same clove.

Just have fun growing them.  It's more fun than painstakingly removing small sprouts out of each clove and it's way better than tossing all that potential in the garbage.

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I discovered a great way to keep my fresh baked breads from drying out while recycling plastic at the same time!

The grocer had the large Earthbound Farm spinach containers on sale the other week.  It was a great sale so I stocked up knowing I could blanch and freeze the spinach for baking Spinach Bread, quiche or adding to my breakfast sandwich.  After the containers were emptied, I couldn't bring myself to toss them away.  The lids held well and the container was the length of a small loaf of bread.  The container is made with a thin plastic that can crumple easy, but it's not so flimsy that it's annoying.  As you can see from the photo above, they hold up to stacking even filled with delicious Buttermilk Bread loaves.

Caring for these plastic container is easy.
Hand wash with hot soapy water, rinse, and dip into a bleach water solution for up to 2 minutes, then allow to air dry.

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Do you ever pop too much popcorn?  I tend to do that from time to time.  I hate to throw it out, especially when I have the salt to butter ratio just right.  Keeping popped popcorn fresh is or was tricky around my house.  Plastic bags work alright when we eat the extra popcorn later in the day, but the bags don't seem to help keep the popcorn snappy-fresh the next day.  Is that a term, snappy-fresh?  You know what I'm talkin'bout.  I needed a way to keep the popcorn fresh for one to two days longer.

I found the answer! A glass jar with a good lid.
The popcorn shown above stayed crispy for two days in that jar.  I'm sure it would have lasted longer, but we ate it all in two days.  It was a nice convenience to have it out on the counter, ready for the kids to pour out in snack bowls.  There's something happy about seeing popcorn in a jar on the counter, too.  It says, "there's fun in this house."

Where do you find big glass jars?
Well, I love yard sales and estate sales.  I like to keep a lookout for canning jars and big glass jars with good lids.  I've paid anywhere from 10- to 50-cents for them.  Usually, the sellers can't imagine what I'm going to do with them, and I can't decide which items I'm going to store in them first.

Caring for glass jars.
When I first get them home, I'll run the glass jars and lids through the dishwasher and use the sanitize cycle just for good measure.  After that, I will hand wash them with hot soapy water, rinse off the soap, soak them in 1.5 teaspoons of bleach to 1/2 gallon of water for 2 minutes, then let them air dry in a sunny spot.

For more on sanitizing with a bleach water solution, read Good Ol' Bleach and Water.

If you don't care to shop yard sales or estate sales, try Amazon.

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Soaking plastics and glassware in a warm, bleach water solution for 2 minutes, then air drying, kills bacteria and removes any residual odors.  The bleach water solution, 1 tablespoon bleach to 1 gallon water, is safe on kitchen counters, drink ware, utensils, inside refrigerators, etc.  It is not necessary to rinse after wiping or soaking objects with the bleach water solution, just let things air dry.  There will be no smell of bleach after objects are dry.

Do not add more bleach than what is called for, more is not better, it's toxic.
Keeping to this ratio, 1 Tablespoon bleach to 1 gallon of water is safe.  Always allow objects to dry before using.

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