BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 08:45 AM

The alternative version is the 6 foot pole after asking in a quaking voice about "where and how" the docter uses it to open the windows.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 06:01 AM

I'm reminded of the old joke. A man goes to the doctor saying that when he farts there is no smell. The doctor produced a red hot poker, "For your nose", he said. " not for your arse!"

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Jeri
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 12:09 PM

Pine nuts, Mingulay? Not garlic.

I remember the purple & white skinned garlic I bought in Korea, from Koreans, just reeked. I always wondered if it was a different variety, or just farmed differently. I miss it. You could kill insects with your breath after eating something with just a couple of cloves.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST,Mingulay
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 11:46 AM

What you are probably eating is the new Euro garlic which has no flavour or smell and has to conform to an approved nominal size. Once harvested this has then to be thrown into the Euro Beaujolais Noveau
wine lake. As neither product has any determinable qualities on the
taste front they can be seperated after several years and sold to an
unsuspecting public giving a vast profit to Bulgarian middlemen who
pass it off to British supermarkets. I saw some recently labelled as
pine kernels in balsamic vinegar - they tasted like peanuts in diesel - Jamie Oliver has lot to answer for!

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Peace
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 01:38 AM

Get a whole chicken, defeathered and gutted. Stuff the cavity with garlic. The whole darned thing. Roast the chicken. Eat it. It's really good. Those who worry about their farts should stay alone for two days. However, since MY farts don't have an odor, it worries me not.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: rich-joy
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 12:14 AM

Interesting variation, Robin, on one of the recipes I submitted to the recent Mudcat Cookbook (the actual recipe (from Provence via Darwin)! is, I think, in one of the numerous food threads here on The Cat ...)

Cheers! R-J

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:34 PM

You can get "odourless" garlic cloves - they are pickled in a salty solution. There is still a very mild odour, though.

An interesting, almost odourless garlic recipie:
40 clove chicken - stuff the cavity of a chicken with as much garlic cloves as will fit in (traditionally 40 individual cloves, or several complete heads, peeled) - add other herbs (parsley is optional) and salt lightly to taste. When cooked, the inside is spooned out, crushed, and made into a sauce.

The cooking proceedure changes the garlic, and it is mild and not overpowering, there being a wonderful flavour imparted to the meat.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Joe_F
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:18 PM

It seems to me that not only garlic & onions but also watercress & radishes have become bland. Tho it would be comforting to blame the Chinese, agribusiness, or white-bread eaters, I suspect I am not getting any younger.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:16 PM

There always were several species of garlic, of differing sizes and potency. The Largest size was Russian Garlic.

The DT speaketh...
The Garlic Song (Ruthie Gorton)
Men of Garlic

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 07:14 PM

The garlic smell comes from allium sulfide, which passes through the body unchanged and is excreted with your perspiration. For many years growers have been trying to develop a variety with less of this chemical so that users will be less cautious and use more garlic. Perhaps they've suceeded.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 07:04 PM

It never smelled it stank and still does.

And that goes for onions - AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: open mike
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 06:52 PM

the other good thing is that garlic IS a good blood pressure medicine!!
nichols seed catalog has a good variety too
Nichols in Oregon
http://www.nicholsgardennursery.com/

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 05:17 PM

Dead cert if you got a spare hundred.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST,Les B
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 04:57 PM

As I've "matured" to the point that I have to take blood pressure meds, I find that one of their side effects is that I can't smell odors as acutely as I once did. Which is great, since I love garlic ! Not so good for the rest of the family, however.

The other side of getting older is that you just don't give a damn if you smell like a stinking rose! Besides, what are the odds of having
some nubile 20-year-old want to jump your bones when you're a senior citizen ??

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 02:00 PM

Yup, the Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org) lists 17 varieties for fall planting. And Seeds of Change has 15.

I understand it's remarkably easy to grow. Hmmm, I feel a bout of gardening coming on...

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 01:50 PM

I live in Santa Clara Valley, at the southern end of which is Gilroy ("the Garlic Capital of the World"). Sometimes in the summer when the wond is blowing from the southwest, the air here is permeated with the lovely smell of newly harvested garlic. This week was such a week, so I can promise you it still smells.

On the other hand, I've recently heard that Cristopher Ranch, a major producer down Gilroy way, has decided to stop growing it there and start importing from China instead. Garlic grown for intercontinental shipping is just BOUND to be less flavorful than what is grown here locally. There's a change in the wind...

If I were you, I'd definitely start buying organically grown garlic at your local natural foods store -- or by all means grow it yourself. Are there "heirloom garlic" varieties available from the cooler seed companies, I wonder? I'll get back to you on that after a research foray.

ClaireBear

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 12:46 PM

Garlic never did smell, 'cause garlic ain't got no nose. It did stink, however. And its stink was delicious and wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 10:40 AM

Trust me, you'll still smell like garlic if you eat a lot. Every now and then I have a 'garlic bomb' and I can smell it - especially under my fingernails, even after repeated scrubbing. If you and your partner are both full of garlic, you won't notice as much after a good smooch. The sense of smell stops noticing things when there's a constant level of smell, as in no changes in the level of intensity.

Another factor is parsley. Parsley somehow keeps you from smelling when you eat garlic. That's why health food stores sell 'garlic/parsley' tablets, and why it's a good idea to eat that hunk of parsely as a garnish on your plate in a restaurant. It might not be enough to stop it coming out your pores, but it WILL freshen your breath.

And Poor Misery, if you cook with whole corms of garlic... when's dinner?

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: hesperis
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 10:38 AM

Mass-farmed foods have all gotten rather tasteless and lost nutrition over the last 40 years.

An orange in 1970 had lost a shocking amount of the quantity of vitamin C compared to an orange in 1940. (I need to find that source again to find the exact number, but all my books are in storage...) Imagine how much worse that is another 30 years later...

Organic food still doesn't approach the nutritional content of food from 1940, but is a lot closer than anything else. Organic homegrown is probably really close.

I can smell a difference between the garlic of just 10 years ago and the garlic in stores now, and it's not a favorable difference!

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 10:08 AM

(I should add to my "I can smell it", I have never had a good sense of smell)

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:59 AM

Possibly that you are getting older and maybe your senses of smell and taste have dropped to some degree (I'm not being funny here - mine have). Possibly it's the garlic you use maybe it's mass grown commercial stuff grown for quantity rather than taste.

Sometimes the differences between supermarket stuff and homegrown/local produce can be remarkable. We harvested our own garlic last month and I can assure you it is both tasty and that I can smell it. Probably the biggest one on taste I have noticed recently was the comparision between or own home grown Charlottes (which are worth going for even if your only option is a supermarket) and one supermarket's new potatoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:22 AM

properly prepared - it never did.

Subject: RE: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: 42
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:20 AM

Its nose is plugged?
j

Subject: BS: Why doesn't garlic smell anymore?
From: rich-joy
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:14 AM

Hi Mudcatters,
Back in the late sixties, people used to worry about the amount of garlic they'd put in a meal, in case their body odour on the following day may prove offensive! In those days, I would put a single clove of garlic in a dish and hope that it would not overpower that dish - nor have any "residual" effects.   
Nowadays, I find that even if I put in a whole corm of garlic, it doesn't even register on the breath!! Why is this?? (I can't believe it's only because "everyone's eating it" and therefore we don't notice it anymore ...)

I'd love some feedback (pardon the pun)!

Poor Misery (Partner of Rich Joy)