April 19th, is National Garlic Day. Cathy Isom tells you how you may pay homage to a stinky vegetable that is also known as nature’s wonder drug. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Garlic, which is dubbed the Stinking Rose because of its overpowering taste and smell, dates back more than 6,000 years ago. It’s a member of the Lily family, which also includes onions, leeks and shallots. It’s great in many culinary cuisines. But it’s also known for its wide-reaching medicinal properties in treating illness and disease. Garlic are rich in protein, Vitamin A, B-1 and C and contains essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium and iron. The U.S. is the 6th top producer of garlic in the world. With much of its supply coming out of Gilroy, California, a town about an hour southeast of San Francisco, known as the self-proclaimed as the Garlic Capital of the World. Will Rogers was once quoted as saying it is “…the only place in America where you can marinate a steak just by hanging it out on a clothes line.”
I’m Cathy Isom…
From: National Garlic Day
A Short History of Garlic
Regarded as a force of both good and evil, the Egyptians are said to have fed the herb to workers building the Great Pyramid of Giza because they believed it boosted their stamina. In the Middle Ages, plague-phobic Europeans ate whole cloves of garlic to fight off the scourge known as the Black Death.
Nature’s Wonder Drug?
The herb, which can also be deemed a vegetable too, is rich in protein, vitamins A, B-1 and C and contains essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium and iron. It also contains 17 different amino acids.