Garlic on the mainline
On my rocky hillside, purslane begins to sprout hither and thither in garden beds about the time garlic leaves turn yellow and brown as they near the end of their run. The leaves lose their green vertical and tend toward discolored diagonal and eventually rest comfortably on the only ground they’ve ever known.
Everybody’s different, and some folks harvest garlic when the first two or three leaves begin to turn yellow. On this discussion, I’m ambidextrous, but I typically wait for all the leaves to flop over entirely brown and withered before my shovel and I unearth the bulbs with their dried leaves.
Sometimes the leaves dry up and separate from the underground bulbs leaving no identifiers for where the bulbs are. Even though I dig the bed with serious intention, some bulbs evade my discovery, and left behind garlic sprouts next year in last year’s garlic bed. That’s okay. Too much garlic is never enough.
I plant garlic cloves in late summer or early autumn and expect to harvest them nine months later when purslane sprouts and spring turns hot – like this week, for example. When a couple garlic bulbs in the kitchen sprouted in 2010, I separated and planted the cloves. They responded, and every year since, I have replanted cloves from the two or three largest bulbs with consistent results. I have not purchased garlic since. My garlic tribe has history here. This is their home. They have stories to tell. It is my responsibility to perpetuate their legacy, and sometimes I smell like a garlic perpetuator.
Have you ever roasted a garlic bulb? Garlic is easier to digest once roasted, so you can eat the whole bulb and smell like royalty, and you can roast several at once. Turn the oven 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, drizzle olive oil over them if that’s your style, roast 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.
Freshly cured garlic can also be frozen. Peel off the papery skins, separate the cloves and pack them into a freezer container. Take out what you need when you need it, and the rest will be patiently frozen.
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 eventime 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 humans have been healing ourselves with garlic since before we built pyramids. The original Greek Olympians were fed garlic as a performance enhancer. Different cultures through history have used garlic to clean the blood, strengthen the circulatory system, calm turbulence in the stomach, chase away intestinal worms and moderate fevers. Cool!
More recently, researchers have concluded garlic moderates high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, and regular garlic-eaters presented a lower risk of developing lung cancer. Also, components in garlic have been shown to neutralize tumorous cells in the brain. “Thank you, garlic,” says my brain!
But there’s more! A compound in garlic has been shown to be 100 times more effective than well-known antibiotics in fighting certain bacteria and deterring vampires. You can also make a garlic-ginger paste to use as an antibiotic salve on wounds or to relieve toothaches and gum issues.
So, eat it, whether raw, roasted, smashed into a creamy paste and spread on bread, or minced and added to your pasta sauce. Better health awaits.