A word or two about garlic
First, trim your fingernails, then water your garden. Put it on the calendar. You’ll be doing it again. Wear a floppy hat and boots to beat the chiggers. The garlic is ready. Dig in.
It is appropriate we have a national holiday to celebrate my garlic harvest. I commemorated the event without a single loud explosion which scares bugs, birds and domesticated family members. Instead, I roasted a garlic bulb and hoisted a beer.
Have you ever roasted a garlic bulb? Garlic is easier to digest once roasted, so you can eat the whole bulb, and you can roast several at once. Turn the oven dial to 400° and remove the papery sheath of the garlic. There are well-intentioned garlic roaster people who snip a tiny bit off the tops of the cloves, but you don’t have to. Position them on a baking sheet so they are stable, and you can drizzle olive oil over them if the urge strikes you. I get stricken this way often.
To keep them from drying out, you might choose to wrap them in something like aluminum foil that will not spontaneously ignite because you’re going to shove them in the oven for 40 minutes or so. If you sprinkle oregano or thyme over everything, the kitchen will smell like you know what you’re doing.
If you roast several, the extras should refrigerate nicely for several days, or they can be frozen.
Freshly cured garlic can also be frozen. Peel off the paper skins, separate the cloves and pack them into a freezer container. Take out what you need when you need it and save the rest, but don’t forget about them – freezers have a way of becoming archives of ancient well-laid plans.
Years ago, I was driving down Highway 101 south of San Jose after dark, windows down in summer, and soon enough I entered a space where the dark was saturated with the presence of garlic. Welcome to Gilroy, where half the United States production of garlic is grown. At roadside diners, you can buy garlic-infused chocolate ice cream, sandwiches with garlic mayonnaise, or garlic jelly to take home for later. Whereas some towns are university towns, Gilroy runs on garlic. And smells like it.
But why eat garlic ice cream? Because we humanoids have been healing ourselves with garlic since before we built pyramids or invented lacrosse. The original Greek Olympians were fed garlic as a performance enhancer. All through the ancient history of different cultures, folks used garlic to clean the blood and strengthen the circulatory system, calm turbulence in the stomach, chase away intestinal worms and moderate fevers.
More recently, researchers in lab coats have concluded folks just like us knew what we were doing all along. Studies show garlic moderates high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, and regular garlic eaters showed a lower risk of developing lung cancer. Components in garlic have been shown to be effective neutralizing tumorous cells in the brain. Impressive!
But there’s more! A compound in garlic called diallyl sulfide has been shown to be 100 times more effective than well-known antibiotics in fighting certain bacteria.
(It must be reported that, at this point, your intrepid writer went to his kitchen and ate a clove of garlic.)
And the list continues, from protecting the liver to fighting off colds.
The simplest way to access the benefits of garlic is to eat it in some way, whether raw, roasted, smashed into a creamy paste and spread on bread, or minced and added to your lentils or pasta sauce.
Because some folks are averse to the strong taste or smell of garlic, clever lab technicians developed garlic capsules and pills which provide garlic benefits without the taste or smell.
You can also make a garlic-ginger paste to use as an antibiotic salve on wounds or to relieve toothaches and gum issues.
It’s a long list. Garlic in soup and sauce. Garlic in a pill. Garlic roasted whole or however you will. Viva la garlic.