My annual most dreaded task

Spring is most people's favourite time of the year. It's my favourite season too; especially since my seasonal allergies haven't been as bad for the past few years. Spring is the time of birds chirping, beautiful (and edible) flowers such as dandelions and jasmine, the cat enjoying more time outdoors than indoors (which I don't necessarily enjoy more but he certainly does!) and above all the weather becomes so nice. We have relatively cold winters and very hot summers so spring is defenitely something we do enjoy. 

But there is this one task in spring that I really, really dread. 

And no, it's not spring cleaning. For years now already, every year I make a year's supply of garlic paste. Garlic is something I use in nearly every dish we eat, so throughout the year we go through a lot of garlic. I always hated it so much to have smelly cutting boards, knives, hands and garlic presses are such a hassle to clean. I once read that someone did the same with ginger and I was like 'I could try that too with garlic instead'. And so I did, and it was such a life safer! (At that time I didnt make a years supply, so it wasn't a mammoth task to tackle.) At the time we bought imported dried garlic, which wasn't the best tasting garlic ever. Currently we live in a place where there's always an abundance of fresh garlic during spring. Fresh garlic is much easier to peel. Above all, fresh garlic is much more gentle for one's hands- peeling a huge amount of dried garlic results in the same kind of burn as chopping hot peppers with your bare hands. Aside from the benefits of fresh garlic, it's still quite a chore that I don't particularly look forward to doing, yet at the same time I'd rather do this once a year kind of smelly and tiring thing than to chop and endlessly wash off all the garlic smells throughout the year. 

So here is my garlic supply waiting and staring at me :), and I'm ready to go, i'm telling myself no more procrastinating. After all the work is done I'll keep my garlic in the fridge (because after all the peeling I'm honestly just too tired!), blend it in the food processor and then transfer it to small containers. I reuse yogurt containers for this, since yogurt here comes in small portion sized containers, which I cover tightly with aluminium foil. Every few days I take out one container of garlic paste and let it defrost in the fridge. It's so convenient to have this on hand, and it's well worth a day or two of endlessly peeling garlic.