Garlic is the king of all flavoring agents and condiments in many kitchens, and although garlic is nearly impossible to work into sweet recipes it works well in damn near every savory recipe ever created.
But many people avoid using fresh garlic because it's a pain to peel, too sticky and stinky to chop or crush, and hard to properly roast, and their dishes are left devoid of that great garlic flavor.
Luckily, there are simple solutions to all of these garlic problems- microwaving garlic cloves for about fifteen seconds will make peeling a snap, or you can just seal the cloves in a jar and shake vigorously until the skin falls away.
Roasted garlic is a delicious addition to salads, guacamole and other dips, or when spread on a piece of toast, but the roasting process can take about an hour which may be too long when you're making dinner.
So rather than waiting around for an hour throw the unpeeled garlic cloves in a cast iron skillet over medium heat, turning occasionally until they're cooked evenly on all sides.
Comments (3)
Roasted garlic is very easy to make in the oven using a muffin pan. Cut off the 1/3 top of the garlic bulbs, brush olive oil and kosher salt on the top of the remaining bulbs and roast in the oven for 15 minutes at 375 or until golden colored. If they are still not ready place another muffin pan on top of the other pan and check every 5-10 minutes until soft. The bulbs should be squeezable and easily come out of their skins, being spreadable like a soft paste. Layer it on baked potatoes or on crispy small bits of toasted bread. Yummy
Second guess... tool handle ornament.
Third guess... cutting tool. Run a thread through the hole and roll the blade back and forth.
http://www.butser.org.uk/iaftex_hcc.html
(snip) "The archaeological record contains a wide variety of "disks", with central holes, and which are of the form necessary to give a "drop spindle" when a shaft is inserted through that hole. The drop spindle is known from times when no record of the spinning wheel exists and is presumed to be the earliest device for producing a continuous thread."
the above link contains illustrations of similar objects to the one found in the russian dig.
here is a link to a pic showing how the whorl is placed on a spindle:
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_sA0GMJLjzis/R59FNcXJkCI/AAAAAAAACm8/o8Wd_YesKq4/Soapstone+Spindles+a.JPG
this link is to an illustration of a modern woman from tibet using (an ornate) drop spindle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tibetan_spinning_wool.jpg
and finally, here is a mayan using a drop spindle for spinning cotton -- note the truncated cone whorl at the base of the spindle -- (the upper-right image):
http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/cmspnwev.gif
But maybe I am being impractical.
The article doesn't give any scale for the object, making it difficult to determine what it might have been.
Maybe it's a (wait for it) decorative object?
Kind of obvious, actually.
It looks like a drawer pull or a door knob. Did they have drawers and doors back then?
> The article doesn’t give any scale for
>the object, making it difficult to determine
> what it might have been.
The article mentions the larger of the objects to be 17 cm (6.7") in diameter.
Given the size my best guess is that it is the base of some art/religious piece. Of course that's always the line used when archaeologists don't know what something is.
Anywho, I vote for millstone as well. They would use this in conjunction with another stone, possibly with grooves in it, and the hole is for a stick to use as a receptacle for whatever weights were needed.
Still doesn't explain all the decorating, but whatever.
The drop spindle whorl theory gets the most points. Religious artifact would be next.
Although, if you do put a cord pull through the hole, it might be the decorative cover of some kind of urn that possible stored grain or oil. The size mentioned makes sense.