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12 Iyar 5762 - April 24, 2002 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
Me and Garlic
by Yaffa Shepsel

The first time I ever cognizantly saw a garlic clove was in my first year of marriage. In my Yekkishe parents' home, it was nonexistent, and I don't even think it earned mention, to say nothing of `honorable.' Garlic, with all it entailed, was simply not eaten by `civilized,' that is, Westernized, people. And my mother was a great cook, but she relied on onions (rarely raw) rather than on we-don't-mention- it.

My husband and I had gone to pay a quickie visit to his father in Pittsburgh, and had joined him in a widower's potluck meal which included garlic cloves in their almost natural state, whole, broiled.

At first I thought the pieces were mushrooms. One taste opened a whole new culinary world for me. Wow! I took to it, and began a get-acquainted campaign with this new spice. I made my own pickles, scoured for recipes with garlic, took lessons from my husband and learned to shove the cloves into slits cut into chicken or meat roasts.

In those days of Carlton Fredricks, the health-food buff, who had a daily radio program, and Prevention Magazine, I learned a lot about the medicinal properties of garlic. Not being of East European origin, they were also too `civilized,' as well as too commerically minded, to suggest eating it naturally, and touted its manifold benefits in the form of innocuous garlic capsules to be consumed daily to prevent heart trouble, to promote a good complexion, to rid children of worms, and as a general, all around tonic for good health.

I thought it a pity to miss out on the flavor part, which is why Hashem created garlic as pungent as it was. Who would want to eat garlic if it had no taste punch? I did draw the line at rubbing into the sides of wooden salad bowls, feeling that it was too much trouble.

I also learned to use it medicinally, as is. For earaches, for example. And it works. You take a peeled clove of garlic, put it in a soup spoon with oil, preferably olive, and heat over an open flame. Within a minute, it will sizzle, releasing its marvelous power into the oil. Let cool and then pour into the offending ear and stop up with cotton. A 99% cure, I would say, and certainly better than resorting to antibiotics. The sooner applied, the better.

Then there was the worm treatment. Did Hashem have this in mind when He created the clove so smooth, like a natural suppository? With a little vaseline, it went into the correct aperture to relieve worms in children. And if they protested, you did it when they were asleep. This, of course, was the last resort. If you could get the kids to eat the garlic raw, crushed into or onto something, you were really better off, since this killed off the worms at the source, in the intestines.

Then there was garlic toast, a sure way to get rid of old bread. I even was brave enough to do this for one sheva brochos. It was the last one in the series, and we had all had our fill of rolls, and I think we women were sorry to see all the bread going to waste, day after day. The men always managed to consume their quota with enough tehina to go along, and didn't care for first course Israeli type salads in any case, but the women were more diet conscious, for one, and too interested in the food to stuff themselves up on bread.

So I had all this challa left from Shabbos sheva brochos, half eaten, which I sliced off at the eaten end. And I didn't have the heart to throw it all away. So for this last sheva brochos meal, which was a smaller, net- family affair, I dared pop into the oven all those half challa, sliced open, spread with margarine and `squozen'- pressed garlic cloves, and voila, an excellent, original, money-saving and delectable starter for the meal. And this is what I still do, occasionally, garlic toast, with challa or bread, and nothing is left around to tell the tale. (Except the breathtaking telltale aroma...)

At some point, we get lazy and use garlic salt for convience. Sometimes. Comes Pesach and it is our tradition to use only fresh garlic, just as some people use only fresh onions on Pesach, rather than dried brown onions. I learned why: since both are strong and pungent, and grow naturally with stalks, at some point these are cut off by the greengrocer, with a knife. Which may have come in contact with chometz. Besides, in former times, onions and garlic were dried in ovens that were also used for chometz. So we are careful to use fresh onion and garlic on Pesach, with stems intact.

Finding fresh garlic was no problem, however, since this is the natural garlic season, the very time of the year that it is freshly harvested. Wherever you go, you see the long stalks with their round bulbs lying on the ground by the greengrocer. So I stock up and feel that my Pesach has had a good start when I can take it home, put it in a chometz-free room, and then make my meat order. The house begins to smell like a salami factory, but it's one step better than a bleach factory.

Over the years I learned not to leave the garlic in a plastic bag, where it will begin to mold. I learn when to use the cloves rather than the garlic salt, and to rejoice when I see the cloves begin to sprout green, towards the end of winter. This means that the new season -- and Pesach -- is around the corner.

I have always marveled at the intricate garlic entwinings they sell at the marketplace, some kind of interweaving of garlic stems and bulbs that makes me feel all thumbs just looking at it. Hung in a kitchen, it is supposed to keep the ayin hora and sundry insects away, and I can imagine it does. It is also a very countrified decoration for a homespun kitchen.

Well, not being crafts-inclined, I have always wanted to have some garlic in the kitchen within arms reach, and not known how to do it with flair. This year, I had my inspiration.

Which is the whole point of this article. A simple craft project that any six-year-old can do to tuck away those garlic bulbs in an attractive but accessible way:

Take an old stocking (a child's, or the 30 denier type) and make a small knot at the bottom. Throw in your first garlic bulb sans `tail', which by now has withered, anyway. Knot above the bulb, then put in the next one, knot, and so on until you have filled the stocking. Hang on a nail somewhere in the kitchen (you may prefer near a window...), and cut off the bottom bulb whenever you've run out of the one you've been using. Your decoration will look none the less attractive, just a bit shorter. And when you see the bulbs begin to sprout, you will know that Pesach is again just around the corner.

Time for your new garlic supply.

Bon appetit.

 

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