My favorite garlic recipe: Garlic Bites

This is a recipe for the brave souls who are willing to sacrifice good breath for a flavorfully healthy punch in the mouth.

Ingredients
- Garlic cloves
- Pepperoni (I like turkey, it's a little less greasy)

Method
- Peel the garlic cloves by cutting them in half and shrugging them out of their skin.  Really large cloves can be sliced into smaller chunks.
- Wrap one slice of pepperoni protectively around your thick slice of garlic, holding it pinched between thumb and forefinger.
- Pin together with a toothpick (or better yet, a sword!), if serving to others.
- Pop the whole thing in your mouth, squeeze your eyes closed, and chew.

Notes
- Be warned, drinking water soon after eating this will actually intensify the hotness... if it's too strong, to reduce the burning hold a bit something with protein or carbohydrates on your tongue, like bread or milk.
- WILL cause garlic breath.

My best college roommate Catherine taught me this, it is the way her dad loves to eat garlic, and I've been hooked ever since.  Somehow the garlic and pepperoni balance each other just right.  It's perfect for that moment a half hour before dinner where you're starting to get hungry and are craving intense flavor... it totally squelches your hunger and tastebuds.

One of the reasons I love eating garlic this way is that it's hard to get a significant amount of raw garlic in one's diet.  Garlic is one of the world's healthiest foods, and cooking kills a lot of its beneficial properties, so it's best to get it raw.  This is one of my cold/flu remedies... it always seems to give me a little extra pep.  And let's face it, who cares about garlic breath when you're sick?

Need more garlic?  Maybe you should grow your own! 

Take the Garlic Bites challenge... try this recipe, and tell me how many cloves you ate.  Tonight I'm at #4 and tempted to finish the rest on that plate, and I'd better stop before I start oozing garlic from my pores!