Roasted Garlic and Hoola Hoops

My assignment for the 4th of July family picnic was to bring salad and corn on the cob. The salad was easy but the corn on the cob? There was none at City Seed that day ,where David was doing the market at Wooster Square and none at a local  corn stand. So I gathered lots of sungolds and bloody butchers to drizzle with olive oil and garnish with basil. Then I saw the garlic-- row after row of it. I hanked seven of them out of the ground, cut their leaves and roots off and peeled off their outer skins. I liberally drizzled that olive oil once again, put them in  a  small cast iron fry pan and baked them. I started them at 350 but raised them later to 450. They were golden and soft in a half hour or so.

Arrivng at the party, all attention was on the gorgeous hoola hoops that a friend makes. Everyone was doing it from the just turned five year olds, to the almost fortys, to the nearly sixties. I fell in love with the feel of picking up a hoola hoop and still knowing exactly how to use it after all these years. 

After wild and wooly hooping,the feasting began. Nobody noticed that the corn was missing as the beautiful roasted garlics were swooned over. Even the just turned fives loved them, for they were sweet as sweet can be.

Later that night I took my brand new sparkly green and purple hoola hoop home and hooped under the nearly full moon as if I had just turned five.