If you’re a garlic lover, and there are many, you know that garlic makes things taste good. You also know that the scent of garlic lingers long – on the breath and in the body.
If you’re not a garlic lover, you’re already saying “Phew!” and moving on to different spices to jazz up your food and your plate.
According to the Internet, there are many good things about garlic. It’s good for your health. It makes a bland recipe into an exciting one. It’s not difficult to grow and/or sell. About the latter, you can ask my neighbor, John. He’s grown garlic for years and often gives it away to friends. Obviously, John believes lots of those good statements about garlic.
The majority of the garlic consumed in America comes form California, although there have been times when I believed that John was trying to change that statistic. China produces 80 percent of the garlic for the rest of the world, with India coming in a close second.
My sister-in-law, Rena, knows a few things about garlic. She often visited her daughter, Jeanie, when Jeanie lived in California. In their travels, they passed through the town of Gilroy, California. You didn’t have to guess you were in Gilroy, often called the Garlic Capital of the World. You could smell Gilroy before you ever arrived in town. Your car windows didn’t even have to be open. The heady (and heavy) smell of garlic permeated the air – and your car. It rode along with you for a while, as well, to remind you how Gilroy earned its title.
That’s one of the things I have against garlic. It stays around way too long. It lingers on your breath and allows people to know what you’ve been eating. On occasion, it even makes them want to shun you. Garlic going down might taste good, but leaving your body, it just plain, old-fashioned stinks.
Doctors will tell you that garlic can reduce blood pressure and cholestrol. Those are only a few of its benefits. It can help your immune system. It might prevent colds.
Please don’t believe I like it; I’m just stating facts. Garlic and I don’t get along too well. I don’t mind the flavor, and I do eat some foods with garlic in them, but garlic took a dislike to me many long years ago. I ordered a spinach omelet at one of my favorite restaurants, something I had ordered many times before. This time, however, the spinach came loaded with garlic.
I ate it and paid – big time – for it later. Ever since then, garlic and I have been very wary of each other. If I cook with it, I allow its flavor to enhance a recipe, but I do it with whole cloves and remove them after they have cooked.
Actually, garlic goes back a long way. The Chinese enjoyed garlic centuries ago – and not just for its taste but also for its medicinal qualities. The Greeks and Romans spoke of it as the “rustics’ cure-all.”
The English, however, dislike garlic and brought that dislike with them to the New World. It took years (centuries actually) before immigrants changed the way Americans thought about garlic.
I am Lithuanian by heritage – through and through. My mom’s parentage was Lithuanian, and so was my dad’s. I don’t ever remember my mother cooking with garlic, so maybe garlic is not part of Lithuanian cooking. I remember lots of sauerkraut and lots of potatoes. Cabbage was often on the menu, but garlic for some reason, didn’t enter the picture in my cooking until after I was married.
My husband Jim was Italian. That was a different story. Garlic in the Mediterranean area is used often and well. And I think northern Italians, where my in-laws were born and raised, enjoyed garlic in their food. I know my sisters-in-laws were born and raised enjoying garlic in their food. I know my sisters-in-law use it.
History tells me that garlic was used through the centuries as a meat and fish preservative, and sometimes the sticky juice in the bulbs was employed as an adhesive in mending glass and porcelain.
Wow! Can you imagine how those houses smelled? I wouldn’t want to live in them, but I think that is a very modern sensibility.
I’m not sure when modern deodorants were invented, but surely it was in the 20th century. Before then, body odor had to have been a problem. And think of the 19th century with its heavy clothing especially for women, and no washing machines.
I’m sure people, even the rich, didn’t take baths often either. I couldn’t have lived then. My nose detects the slightest bad smell and pushes me in the opposite direction. But since everyone smelled bad, I guess people were accustomed to ripe odors in the past and learned to live with it.
If you love garlic, you’re not alone. Average consumption of garlic per year is believed to be about two pounds per person (I hope they’re not counting me). That’s about 302 cloves per person. In that case, I know they’re not counting me. My average consumption is about 10 cloves a year.
So, if you’re a garlic lover, please feel free to take up the slack and eat the part of my share that I can’t. I won’t hold it against you. Just don’t breathe too hard on me, please. Remember my sensitive nose.
from Don T Breathe - Google News http://ift.tt/2ePaG2i
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