How to Make Garlic Salt...and How to Balance Blogging and Life

I don't know how parents stay sane.  Really, I don't.  Between work (whether you have a full-time job or stay at home), extracurricular activities, beginning-of-the-winter illnesses, last-minute work trips, etc., etc., I'm surprised that parents get to sleep at all, let alone have a hobby.  My hobby is cooking and writing for this blog, and it will remain a hobby unless someone wants to pay me to do it.  (Hint, hint...anyone out there want to pay me to write here???)  And as fulfilling and fun as this blog is, it is often the first thing to get cut from my to-do list when duty calls.  Unfortunately, duty has called a lot more recently.  So please forgive my sporadic posts, and please understand that I probably won't be baking 18 different types of holiday cookies to share here.  Not that I don't want to bake all of those cookies and share them with my lovely readers, but the reality is that I'll be lucky if I get to bake one type of cookie this season!  It may seem like I'm complaining, but I'm not.  My family is healthy and happy...just very, very busy at the moment, and I'd like to savor just a little of that time before my kiddos get too old to want to share that time with me.  :-)

I am, however, going to share a great tip today about making your own garlic salt.  For some reason, I'm either always out of the stuff or it's been so long since I used it that it's all caked at the bottom of the jar.  The other day, I realized I was out, but really wanted to use some on baked kale chips.  Then the proverbial light bulb went off over my head...and I made some from scratch!  It takes all of 5-10 minutes to make and really tastes fresh--I guess anything's fresher when it doesn't come out of a plastic bottle!  I made extra to have on hand and stored it in an airtight container in the refrigerator, but it didn't last long.  The garlic salt turned a greenish tint, which although wasn't mold-based, did turn me off from using it.  This should last a few days in the fridge, but it's easy enough to make it on demand whenever you need it!

First, peel and trim your garlic.  I used two cloves for this batch, which made about 1/4 cup.  Roughly chop the garlic and place in a mortar bowl.

Add about a tablespoon of Kosher salt and using a pestle, grind into a paste.

Continue adding Kosher salt until the mixture is no longer paste-like and looks more like salt.

And that's it!  Use it as you would with store-bought garlic salt.  It tasted delicious on the kale chips, but I bet it would also be great on popcorn!

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