At the Gilroy Garlic Festival, there is no shortage of cooking imagination. Anything that can be combined with garlic has been tried and most likely sold and eaten. So if you suggested garlic ice cream, egg rolls or kangaroo (on a stick), you would be very unoriginal.

After spending a good deal of Saturday overdosing on garlic, visiting various vendors and watching little kids scale portable rock climbing walls in near hundred-degree heat, I sat in the shade and listened to the cool sounds of Smurfy Brown. Exhibiting crazy versatility, the four-man band easily covered the likes of the Rolling Stones, No Doubt, Goo Goo Dolls and Prince.

One thing I learned: if you know the back roads and ignore the festival’s directional signs, you can avoid most of the traffic snarl getting to and from the Garlic Capital of the World.