A simple way to use Garlic Scapes

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      Have you ever planted garlic?  It is so easy to grow.  If you purchase a bulb of garlic from the grocery store, each clove in that bulb is a seed and will grow into a garlic plant.  All you have to do is plant it in the soil, root side down and water it and soon it will begin to grow! 
       When your garlic starts growing, (and sometime the bulb will start to sprout before you have even planted it), bright green stalks will grow up out of it.  These may look like green onions to you, but what they really are is "garlic scapes,"  and they are edible and delicious, especially if you love the taste of garlic! 

     I've written posts before about growing and regrowing things from your kitchen.  Garlic is one of the easiest, quickly gratifying things to grow.  It can grow in a pot or outside in your garden bed.  When you harvest the green scapes, you can cook with them and the energy from those scapes will be sent back down to the root where the bulb is growing.  It will take about 8 months for a new bulb to grow, but in the meantime, you can be using the scapes.  Now that is what I call a useful plant! 

     
      One of the easiest ways to use your scapes is to make garlic bread with them!  And, since I am also regrowing my green onions, I decided to add a bit of onion flavor to my garlic bread to enjoy with the spaghetti that we were having for dinner.  

I call that my veggie beef spaghetti because I sauté chopped onion, beet tops and zucchini and add it to the ground beef in my sauce. Super healthy and delicious!

      Making the bread is simple.  All you need to do is to harvest a few garlic scapes and a couple of green onion stalks.  Chop them up so that you have a few tablespoons of these aromatic herbs.

My onions and garlic scapes combines.

If you want your bread to be extra garlicky, you can also chop up 1 extra clove of garlic. 
     Next, you mix all of that into a cup of softened butter. 
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It smells so good!

      Next, you will take an unsliced loaf of French bread and slice it horizontally.  Then, you spread both halves of the bread liberally with the garlic butter. 

I like my garlic bread to really have the butter melted into it.

     Now, put the halves back together and wrap it back into its paper wrapper and put it in the microwave for about a minute and a half to two minutes.  Alternatively, you can lay it on a cookie sheet open,  and put it in a warm oven, or, wrap it in foil and put it in the regular oven.   When it is warm and the butter is melted, pull it out and slice it into portion sizes. 
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     You will love it! click on the recipe to get a printable version.
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       Other ways to use garlic scapes are to use them in chicken coatings, in salads and to sauté with vegetables or in any dish that you use garlic in normally.  They would be great in homemade salsa or humus!  
      I hope you give growing garlic a try, and I hope you give cooking with the scapes a try as well!  I love it when you can use the whole plant! 
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