The Zen of Mincing Garlic

Garlic's dual personality: bold & pungent or mild & sweet, depending on how you use it. Today, I kick off my blog, Try Cooking Therapy , by talking about my all-time favorite ingredient: garlic! When I was going through chemo WHILE recovering from a severe back injury (ahh, 23 broken bones in my back and ribs) I felt pretty useless. I couldn't stand for more than a few minutes. So to give myself some sense of being productive, I dragged my cutting board, my paring knife and chopping knife--and my sorry butt--into the adjacent family room. I sat on the couch and happily minced away while binging on some random Netflix show. (BTW, Netflix is the best streaming service while recovering from illness or injury. Easiest interface to pause...forward, and search show/movie categories.) I digress. Back to garlic... Even though I could buy a jar of minced garlic to save time, it's utterly awful! Tastes like mushy, citric acid-infused garlic. No bite. No crunch. No...