I’ve posted a couple of recipes lately in which I used garlic scapes.

I’ve gotten emails.

Garlic scapes? WHAT are garlic scapes? Where do I buy them? Help!

I have to be honest. I never heard of garlic scapes before they came in our box from our CSA.

But they came several weeks in a row, so I had to figure out what to do with them.

Apparently, garlic scapes are the shoots that garlic bulbs send up as they’re growing. Garlic bulbs want to become garlic plants, so they send up green things like onions do.

Farmers harvest these shoots so that the plant uses its energy to make a bigger bulb instead of making a bigger plant. I get this. That’s how plants work.

Instead of throwing the sprouts in the compost pile, our farmers send them out in the CSA boxes. I’ve heard you can also buy them at some farmer’s markets or directly from farmers who grow garlic.

Garlic scapes definitely taste like garlic, but the flavor is very mild. They’re like garlic essence, without the bite you back quality of a clove of garlic.

If you love garlic like I do or if you like garlic but hate to smell for days, you should definitely look for garlic scapes.

And then come back and tell me about it.

To inspire you, I found a few recipes featuring garlic scapes:

• My pesto primavera
• My zucchini eggs
• A newsletter with recipes for scape pesto, fried scapes, and spinach and scape frittata
• An article with lots of tips for use, plus garlic scape tortillas, mashed potatoes with scapes, and chicken with scapes and capers
• Thanks to Annie at PhD in Parenting for sharing a recipe with me for grilled garlic scapes

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