Sunday, December 1, 2013

garlic!

German White
This fall, we planted four varieties of garlic- German White, German Red, Turkish and Zemo, all hard necked varieties. Zemo - a porcelain variety from the Republic of Georgia with a high content of allicin, Turkish a hot spicy variety, German white -moderately spicy and stores very well, German Red -full bodied garlic flavor. Garlic is, as surely you already know,  wonderfully good for you. It's a potent antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-fungal agent but sadly most of those benefits are lost in the cooking. Researchers have found that diallyl sulfide found in garlic, was as effective as 100 times as much of the antibiotics erythromycin and ciprofloxacin and would often work in a fraction of the time! It has been found to be beneficial to protect from lung, brain, prostate and breast cancer, help alleviate high blood pressure and high cholesterol and the anti-inflammatory property in garlic can help the body fight against allergies. As the powerful benefits of garlic come mostly through its raw form, it's lucky we have a dish that makes it very easy to eat raw garlic ... pesto! We will be using the Turkish to make pesto this summer/fall and will be consuming lots of it.

Turkish Red