Organic Green garlic – is the thing! … or not at all! (This sounds better in Hebrew)
When you receive organic vegetables delivered to your home, green garlic may be included in your box. You will not see this in supermarkets … the shelf life is too short, much shorter than the dry garlic.
To really enjoy green garlic, it must be fresh, because just like green onion, chives, young leeks (members of the same family) it is eaten entirely with its leaves. It is different than the dry garlic. The sharpness is more subtle, it is juicy, it strengthens and blends in beautifully with almost everything. For me, green garlic is really exciting. It is also one of the few organic vegetables available only in its season. It refuses to grow when it doesn’t want to 🙂
It seems that the world is divided into two groups of people:
Garlic lovers – Gilroy, California, has an annual garlic festival. In Las Vegas there is a restaurant called the Garlic Cafe; and
Garlic haters – in the English royal family garlic is forbidden! And there are plenty of groups dedicated to this hatred — Knights of Garlic Haters, etc.
Fresh green garlic in my opinion, can bring these two groups together with its gentility. Even haters can enjoy it.
Green garlic is used as a vegetable rather than as a spice and the garlic taste is milder and more delicate than that of the dry garlic. Never the less, it is still spicy and strengthening and very healing.
The compound allicin is found both in dry garlic and in the green garlic, providing both with the characteristic taste and pungent smell and both are effective as anti -parasitics, and in treating infections and inflammation.
Garlic is also attributed with special powers of causing sweating, strengthening the immune system and the gastric system and even preventing cancer …. I wrote much more about the garlic in previous newsletters.
Also, Organic Garlic from A to Z
Garlic appears frequently in antiquity – It is told that the Pharaohs had a great work strike in building the pyramids because they stopped providing garlic to the workers. They refused to continue working without this delicious, healing vegetable.
It is mentioned in the Bible: " זָכַרְנוּ אֶת הַדָּגָה אֲשֶׁר נֹאכַל בְּמִצְרַיִם חִנָּם אֵת הַקִּשֻּׁאִים וְאֵת הָאֲבַטִּחִים וְאֶת הֶחָצִיר וְאֶת הַבְּצָלִים וְאֶת הַשּׁוּמִים " (Numbers 11).
And the חז"ל listed many virtues of the garlic: " משביע, משחין, ומצהיל פנים ומרבה הזרע והורג כנים שבבני מעיים וי"א מכניס אהבה ומוציא את הקנאה " (בבא קמא פ"ב, ע"א). The Jerusalem Talmud tells about Ezra the writer that always ate garlic in his house on Friday nights because it brings love and removes lust “הוא התקין שיהו אוכלין שום בלילי שבתות שהוא מכניס אהבה ומוציא תאוה " (Jerusalem Talmud, Megillah 84 )
To your health!!!
We expected in this weeks baskets, along with the green garlic, of course (draft only) also:
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Fennel
Cabbage
Daikon radish
Lemons
And beets
Larger ones also:
Ramiro peppers
Onion
Coriander
And parsley
Fruit baskets :
Clementines
Oranges
And Kiwi
Larger ones also:
Sweeties
Avocado
And bananas
