Garlic is wonderful, Del!!! I think more and more people have heard about all the claims that it is wonderful for the immune system, and generally a beneficial, joyous part of life.
My grandmother, who started teaching me to cook at her knee when I was about two years old, never used garlic at all. She was born and grew up in Missouri, and I think it was just a foreign idea. The immigrant groups who tended to use it were Italian and Chinese, and their gradual influence on the mainstreaming of garlic in America was definitely not felt in the Missouri of that day.
Thank goodness things have changed!! San Franciso is redolent of garlic, wafting out from almost every restaurant. I even have a garlic cookbook, from the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Using a whole head--not a clove--of garlic in recipes is pretty common out here. I know the entire world doesn't cook like this, though. When I first met my husband, who had just arrived from Ireland, I went to the store and got bagels and San Francisco salami, and when I brought them back he looked at me like I had just dragged in a dead rat and seriously proposed roasting and eating it, or something. I spent several years cooking huge pots of potatoes every night for him, but gradually he has come to love the more exotic things we consider good food out here.
This is a wonderful popcorn recipe I adapted from the garlic cookbook. Everyone who has had it loves it, and when my daughter was small and I had to provide snacks and treats for school, this is what she always asked me to bring:
Garlic Basil Popcorn
3 extra large cloves fresh garlic, very thinly sliced
4 tbsp. butter or margarine (not light margarine--it makes the popcorn soggy)
large pinch of dried basil
1 tbsp. oil
1/4 cup popcorn kernels
salt to taste
4 tbsp. parmesan cheese, grated
Melt butter or margarine, and add thinly sliced garlic and let stand for a few minutes so that the flavor is absorbed into the butter. Remove garlic slices, and discard them.
Heat oil in a heavy pot, suitable for popcorn popping. Drop one kernel in the oil, and when it pops, add the rest of the popcorn and cover. Shake pot now and then as it pops.
When all corn has popped, add butter mixture (I reheat this over a low heat while the corn is popping).
Sprinkle with basil, salt and parmesan cheese and stir or shake to coat well.
Del, I am sure you are right that the Unibomber didn't have a microwave at his country estate. He would feel right at home at my house! I DID have a stove and refrigerator, but the stove, which is from the thirties, no longer provides even, regulated heat, and so I don't think I am going to be baking much in the near future. The refrigerator keeps things cold, sort of, but it is starting to rust on the outside, and when I open the hydrator to get some fruit out, a huge amount of water always gushes out onto the floor.
I am sure you have heard about the shortage of rental housing out here, and the escalation of rental costs. A plain two bedroom apartment in an okay neighborhood is at least $1,800 a month suddenly, although local salaries certainly haven't gone up, and to snare one you have to compete with a hundred other people, and provide the best RESUME (I'm not kidding) in addition to stellar credit, and you'd better be cute and likeable, too!!! My house is worth well over $2000 a month at these rates, and I don't want to move. Because we have rent control for current residents only, our rent would more than double if we had to move. Our landlord is ambivalent about selling this house, and lives in Los Angeles, and so we try to just never get his attention except for sending him the rent. So I just cook on the top of the stove for the most part. No, we haven't stooped yet to hacking up the rafters for heat or anything. We gather our firewood in the forest.
Oh dear, I sound like Little Red Riding Hood or something!!!!!! |
