Eat Like a Freak: Garlic Jelly

I think I already do. Eat like a freak that is, but just in case, I ate especially freaky yesterday, in an especially freaky place. The NOLA Hot Sauce and Gourmet show in Kenner...

New Orleans is such a great place and while it's full of Southern CHARM, I forget sometimes that I really live in the Deep South again and then I find myself in a place like Kenner which is a mere 10 minutes outside of New Orleans and oooooooh my...there were um...a *few* rednecks there...including this guy:


It was really hard to get this photo because A) I had to look at him and B) he was pacing around because he was a participant in the "spicy lick-a-thon" and I reckon the heat was a gettin' to him.

ANYHOO, the show was great. We walked around and filled our tiny spoons with all kinds of hot and BBQ sauces, pickles and jellies. I did indeed eat like a freak, 'cuz I don't even like jelly but I LOVED THIS STUFF:

Is Garlic Jelly weird? Any kind of jelly is weird to me, so I'm just asking...but whoa is this stuff GOOD! I have no idea what I'll eat it on since I don't eat a lot of bread but I may have to make an exception for this stuff. Plus I just really love the way it looks, all those little chunks of garlic and bits of parsley suspended in jelly really captivate me (probably because I'm a Southern redneck myself-mawmaw, LOOK! Jelly!).

The maker of this magical stuff was one of my favorite people I met that day. Rita Smith and her husband Roger make all kinds of salsa, jellies and of course pickles, but it was the line of jellies that really grabbed our attention. You can look them up on their website, which is on the internet, (so is my blog, by the way) at www.olehomestead.com. I'm pretty sure it's the only place you'll find "Crawfish Jelly" (which is the most amazing color of peachy pink I've ever seen and I wish now that I'd gotten a jar just to gaze upon)!

I met some other amazing folks but that'll be the next post I write!