I recently have scored quite a number of useful things via my local Buy Nothing group: a “vintage” set of Pyrex glass mixing bowls; a lot of fun board books to entertain Kaia’s passion for reading; eight massive bulbs of fresh garlic. With the garlic, it was more an aside from the person I picked up about eight board books from. She kind of threw it in as an after thought, and I passively said “why not?” I mean, I could always use garlic. But when I collected it, I realized, WOW. This is a LOT. Plus, the cloves were WAY fatter than the ones I get from Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. And I don’t know how old this garlic was or if it was on the brink of going bad. So when I bought some bok choy, I thought I could make it the way the Sambal Lady makes her bok choy, which is to blanch it, season it, then sprinkle the top with homemade garlic chips. And with half of these garlic bulbs, plus another bulb of my own, I decided I’d make garlic chips. But I didn’t really want to peel and slice all 70-80 cloves of garlic by myself.

So, I decided I’d use the Mother’s Day excuse and ask Chris to do this task. It’s not a task for ME; it’s a task for the family to enable tasty meals. When he woke up this morning, I declared this to him, and he immediately groaned. Then, he saw exactly how many cloves there were on the kitchen counter, and he tried to negotiate with me and said he’d do half. I said, no, he had to do all of them. In the end, maybe he left about 15 undone, but it was still a pretty good job. He spent about an hour just peeling them, then did the slicing a few hours later. While Kaia napped in the early afternoon, I fried the garlic. Unfortunately, I probably fried them a minute too long, but it was still edible.

While many mothers out there want expensive gifts and flowers for Mother’s Day, I really do not want any *thing*, per se. I’d really just like acts of service as love. I will make sure to ask Chris to peel and slice garlic cloves for future garlic chips, especially now that I didn’t master frying them to the optimal level during my first try.