Garlic Festival - Isle of Wight

It's on this weekend, I'm planning to go:
http://www.garlic-festival.co.uk/

"Arrive hungry! You won’t miss the pungent aroma of our garlic; it flavours everything, hot crusty bread, moules, sweetcorn, prawns, lamb, beer, ice cream, coffee and lots more! This year there are many new items on the various menus"

The moules and bread sound good - might give the ice-cream a miss :confused:

I've never been before - anyone else been or going?

 

Have you been to it before kalmia? I showed Mrs JWK the website yesterday and initially she looked keen, but then it said they were expecting 20,000 people! Blimey I didn't think you could fit that many people on the IOW! :rolleyes:

 

Well the ferrys booked so we're off whatever the weather, the forecast for the IOW doesn't look too bad this weekend - plus it might keep a few of the crowds away

 

Cheers for that Kandy, we were planning on going to the Garlic farm anyway, and hadn't realised this festival was on until after we booked the ferry. Mrs JWK had a meal out the other day and large toasted garlics were on the menu as starters; apparently they were delicous, so I'm sure we're going to come back with a few different types to try growing. :thumb:

 

So we went to the show and then we stayed on the Island for a couple of weeks - hence its taken me a while to get around to this update. We would have been a little disappointed if we had gone over just for the show, but it was pretty good - more like a country fete with dog shows, face painting, craft tent etc.

There was various garlic flavoured stuff like beer and ice-cream, I tried some fudge but all I could taste was garlic :rolleyes:. It was a bit weird.

There were a few garlic related things there, not as many as I'd imagined I'd hoped to find some knowledgable expert to tell me all about it, but they seemed to have hired a load of temps in the main Garlic Marquee who could take money for products but couldn't answer any of my questions. I was told I would have been better off just visiting The Garlic Farm really.

Anyway I ended up buying some Elephant Garlic for planting out later this month. The following picture shows one we bought for roasting, Mrs JWK has tried them before - apparently its delicious:



the photo makes it look bigger than it really is (its about 4" in diameter) the piece of paper behind is A5 sized and I think I had the camera too close.

 

The festival's main sponsor do mail order I think (i haven't used it) here's their web site:
http://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/

I just had a quick look on their site but it doesn't immediately jump out at me - I reckon if you emailed them they might tell you which of the varities are sweet.

Someone has now told me that elephant garlic isn't a 'true' garlic, more a kind of leek - I'm still looking forward to the taste trial!