Stay Safe From Vampires And Lower Your Cholesterol (Garlic)

Member Name: janharper

Product:	Garlic
Date:	19/05/08 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Adds great taste to food, possible health benefits

Disadvantages: Breath smells

Garlic has many uses in the kitchen. I use it for flavouring pizza, making garlic chicken and bread and for bolognese sauces, to name but a few possibilities.

The main reason I like it is because I get it free. How do I do that?

Well, its easy.

I am the world's laziest gardener and even I have an amazing garlic crop which provides as much as I want all year and leaves me with a suplus to give away.

Simply find a sunny spot in your garden and till the soil until its nice and fine. You use the garlic cloves inside the bulbs as 'seed' for more bulbs.

So, one cloves can turn into twenty and those can turn into 400 and so it goes on (until you are over run with garlic!)

Sow the cloves about an inch below the surface of the ground and leave a couple of inches between them. In a few weeks you will have garlic bulbs that you can tie together and store somewhere dry.

If the weather is good you can get two crops per year.

Sow in March and September.

Check the variety if you are buying your starter seed and it will tell you when best to sow.

As well as culoinary uses garlic is know as a preventation medicine for colds and flu'. It is also thought to reduce cholesterol levels. Scientists are currently investigating its anti-viral and anti-fungal properties.

In folkilore itn is also said to keep vampires away, so maybe that's as good a reason as any to eat it.

The only thing that puts me off eating garlic is the fact that it stays on the breath for ages. Sometimes it can be a problem the next day.

Some people claim that parsley stops it, but I have never found that it works. The only way is to use a very good breath freshener and repeat the treatment throughout the day.

There is nothing worse than standing by someone who reeks of garlic in a supermarket queue, or, worse still, at work.

My personal view is that its enjoyable to eat and if it might just have health benefits too, then its worth growing my own. If you do prefer to buy it is not very expensive to buy fresh.

Dried, or powdered garlic is nowhere near the same.

Summary: Easy to grow, tasty to eat, if you like it, grow your own.