Granulated garlic. Out of five pairs of paints I own that I wear only for work, all but one smell like it. It has permeated the very fabric and simply will not wash out.

I’ve been working for Black Bottle for a year and nine months. In that time, I’ve worked the Flatbread & Pantry position nearly the entire time. Sure, I’ve worked other stations, but mainly I’ve been slinging flatbread pizzas, Curried Potatoes & Cauliflower and Blasted Broccoli. Lots of broccoli…

It is the broccoli that is drenching me in granulated garlic. It is tossed in a huge bowl with salt, black pepper and granulated garlic, and then oil before being (usually) thrown into a blast-furnace-hot convection oven and baked until crispy around the edges. On any given night I will make close to thirty orders, if not more. Sometimes - no, usually more.

Broccoli. I used to love this lush dark green vegetable. Now, I can barely look at it in a grocery store. It does not make me sick thinking about it, I just don’t have the fondness for it that I once had. I used to eat it raw as a kid with just some butter and a little dash of salt & pepper.

So I was a weird kid - what’s different now?

Where am I going with this post? I really don’t know. Maybe I’m just venting about smelling like garlic everywhere I go. More like reeking of it. When I eventually leave Black Bottle for other pastures, I’ll have to throw out the garlic-laden pants. It’ll be liberating, if wasteful. I don’t like being wasteful, but they just stink so much.