The Barbarock Blog

If you’ve ever stored very garlicky leftovers in a plastic container, you know that plastic can pick up the scent of garlic and hold onto it for a long time.  Not too bad if most of your food is garlicky or compatible with the smell of it.  But what if you need the container to store banana pudding or cranberry salad–yuck!  You don’t want to mix those foods with a garlic smell.  Barbarock has a trick for you,  passed down from her Aunt Mattie May Swift:  just take a piece or two of newspaper, crumple it up and store it overnight in the container.  In the morning, the smell will be gone.

And the reason Barbara thought of this tip today was because she just made some garlic bread for her husband and needed to deodorize a plastic container that had held the garlic she’d minced ahead of time .  As a bonus tip, here is Barbara’s recipe for easy low-fat garlic bread that meets many dietary restrictions:  take a loaf of French bread and slice it in 1.5 inch slices.  Lay them out on a foil-covered cookie sheet and spread each piece with a spread made from 1/3 cup low-fat butter (Barbarock uses I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter, but use whichever one you like) mixed with 1 tbsp of fresh minced garlic (substitute garlic powder if you’re short on time) and 1 tsp of dried parsley.  Just spread on the bread and heat the bread enough to melt the mixture through.