smashing pumpkins 269European plant in the parsley family, but the root word is fetid. Garlic ob-
viously worked as well, the medicinal property being that nobody would
get close enough to your children to cough on them. As they used to say in
New York, “A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a
seat.” In fairness to its devotees, I should point out that real medicinal
value has been attributed to garlic, stemming from its antibacterial sulfur
compounds and its capacity to break down fibrin and thin the blood. The
Prophet Muhammad recommended it for snakebite, Eleanor Roosevelt
took it in chocolate- covered pills to improve her memory, and Pliny the
Elder claimed it was good for your sex life. I wouldn’t bet on that last one.
We stick to culinary uses. When the tops of the cured garlic and on-
ions have faded from green to brown but are still pliable, and their odor
has tamed, I braid them into the heavy skeins that adorn our kitchen all
winter. The bulbs keep best when they’re hung in open air at room tem-
perature, and we clip off the heads as we need them, working from the
top down. Garlic is the spice of life in our kitchen: spaghetti sauce, lasa-
gna, chicken soup, just about everything short of apple pie begins with
some minced cloves of garlic sautéed in olive oil. I spend it as the cur-
rency of our culinary happiness, cutting off the heads week by week,
working the braids slowly down to their bottom ends, watching them like
the balance of a bank account. With good management we’ll reach the
end in midsummer, just as the new crop gets harvested. But we always
come down the home stretch on empty.
Garlic, like the potato, is a more subtle vegetable than most people
know, since most groceries carry only one silverskin variety that keeps like
Egyptian royalty. Garlic connoisseurs know the rest of the story. Seed Sav-
ers Exchange lists hundreds of varieties, each prized for its own qualities
of culture and flavor. They fall into two basic categories: the lusty, primi-
tive hardnecks have a “scape”—a flower stalk that shoots up from the
center of the bulb in early spring, striking an incomprehensibly circular
path, growing itself into something like an overhand knot before it blooms.
The more domestic softnecks are better for braiding and storage. Beyond
this, garlics are as hard to categorize as red and white wines, with equally
enthusiastic legions of fans. Inchelium Red has taken first place in taste-
tests on several continents. Red Toch (according to my seed catalog) has