Garlic

“Garlic (Allium sativum). A kitchen plant, in the cold remedies beside roasted sour orange and pimento.”

“Petiveria alliacea. One garlic-smelling herb, many names: mucura in Peru, guine and pipi in Brazil, anamu in the Spanish Caribbean, guinea hen weed in Jamaica, herbe aux poules in the French Caribbean, also tipi and apacin. Native to the Amazon, Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico, also found in parts of Africa. Its use in religious ceremonies is documented since the era of slavery in the Americas. Elijah knew it as guinea hen weed in Jamaica and met it again as mucura around Iquitos. No source on Yoruba or other West African use of it was found.”

“Warming and cooling foods. Yakuzen sorts foods by five natures. Ginger, garlic, negi and root vegetables count as warming, cucumber, watermelon and tomato as cooling. Sources disagree on some (daikon, tofu). It is the kitchen side of the same way of seeing: ginger and negi in winter, cucumber in summer.”

“Warming and cooling foods. Yakuzen (medicinal cooking) sorts foods by five natures (cold, cool, neutral, warm, hot), from Chinese medicine via Kampo. Warming: garlic, ginger, negi, lamb, spices. Cooling: watermelon, cucumber, tomato, tofu. Winter and root foods tend warm, summer foods cool. Sources disagree on some (daikon, tofu). In the kitchen: ginger and negi in winter, cucumber and goya in summer.”

“Ajo (garlic): the abuelas ate it raw against everything. Garlic in the food is food. Garlic capsules with blood thinners: pharmacist.”

“Ajo (Allium sativum, garlic). Raw on bread, in every pot. Food. Supplements with blood thinners: pharmacist.”

“Garlic (Allium sativum). Beli luk. Raw for blood pressure, colds and thrush, cooked with nettle, laid beside the Ederlezi lamb "for health". Never instead of blood pressure medicine. Caution: garlic supplements with blood thinners, stop a week before surgery. Garlic on the skin or in the ear: chemical burns, we do not do that anymore.”

“Nettle with garlic: young nettle (kopriva, urzică) picked with gloves, boiled, then sautéed with garlic, the broth drunk too. In Kosovo nettle's top use, in all three groups, was against "weak blood". Beside it: beetroot "to purify the blood", dock, fat hen (loboda) in burek, horsetail tea as "purifying".”

“Pungent belongs to the lung. Ginger, spring onion, garlic: the flavours of the cold soup.”

“Warm: ginger (pungent), the warming root of the cold soup, the period tea and the month after childbirth. Garlic and onion (pungent). Mutton and beef, the warming red meats of winter. Cinnamon, with cardamom, nutmeg and cloves, the warming winter spices. Sesame oil, black sesame and red beans, from the confinement kitchen. Root vegetables and nuts, sweet, spicy and red-orange foods.”

“One small task. "Tonight, a warm soup with garlic and onion, a glass of tea you let cool a little, and bed an hour early."”

“Fish. Fish is cold, so it comes with herbed rice and garlic, both hot. Never with yoghurt, the household says, two cold things together. After a cold fish meal a warm dessert such as khagineh, a sweet egg dish, can follow.”

“The house. Chukku kaapi, warm, sipped slowly. Kanji or a thin rasam with pepper and garlic. Warm water through the day. A warm room, an early night, no cold drinks.”

“The Ayush list. In March 2020 India's Ministry of Ayush itself published a household self-care list: warm water through the day, turmeric and garlic in cooking, turmeric in hot milk, a little sesame or coconut oil or ghee in the nose, and sesame or coconut oil held in the mouth and spat out. It said plainly that it did not claim to treat any disease. Auntie Sunita likes that the ministry named coconut oil. "Even the government knows Kerala."”

“Garlic and onion. In the soup and on the bread. Some families hang garlic in the room. "Luk ot semi nedug", onion against seven ailments, the old people say. A food writer remembers her Russian garlic treatment: "no one wanted to be near me because I smelled so bad!" One line: garlic on the skin can burn, and garlic pills beside a blood thinner go past the pharmacist.”

“Pepper vodka, garlic vodka. Other people's grandfathers. Nicolai says no in one sentence: "Vodka is not a medicine, not with pepper either. Tea with raspberry jam, and bed."”

“Garlic and onion. Herodotus reported an inscription on the Great Pyramid recording 1,600 talents of silver spent on radishes, onions and garlic for the workers. Scholars today think he misread it, perhaps an offering list. "The workers ate onions. The number is a tourist's number."”