The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

[Deleted User]

We're inland here and wild garlic grows in profusion in all the woodland for miles around, you leave the bulb and pick the leaves, the flowers have a stronger taste and the flavour of the leaves becomes increasingly 'rank' as they age.  It makes a fantastic pesto and year on year is a crop for free that just keeps on giving.

MingVase

Wild garlic grew everywhere when I was young and is everywhere in the woods behind this house. We  called it stinky weed and I think it's vile!

DawnW

It grows in woodlands all over here in the SW. It also grows under the hedge in my front garden, comes back every year. Not sure how it got there, as we live on the edge of a small town - but the road I live on is named for the woodland that used to cover it. I also have violets and foxgloves seed themselves all over the garden. I only pull out the ones in the veg bed.

thriftwizard

I've just scrumped some wild garlic plants from the shady end of my friend's huge garden & planted them in our shrubbery. The aspect's right, the shadiness is right, the soil's right - now will the bantams leave it alone? So far, so good...

greenbee

If they don't @thriftwizard at least they'll be ready-seasoned (although I'm not sure what the eggs will be like!)

Nargleblast

I suppose garlic was probably looked upon in the 1960s as one of those weird continental things like duvets and bidets. And do you remember when you could only get olive oil in tiny bottles from the chemist to soften ear wax? 

thriftwizard

Nargleblast said:

I suppose garlic was probably looked upon in the 1960s as one of those weird continental things like duvets and bidets.

 My question is why, when previously garlic had been a common & well-used flavouring here, for the best part of 2,000 years? How do things fall out of favour to the extent that people just stop using them, and so quickly? Maybe it was to do with the wars, when anything sourced from abroad was either very hard to get hold of, or deeply suspect because of its origins, as continental garlic is usually bigger than ours? Now, of course, I'm wondering what else we just stopped eating for one reason or another, and whether it's still out there just waiting to be re-discovered - resources we don't know about! Hmm...

Oh dear, I think I'd better have a cool bath, go to bed, and stop thinking!

[Deleted User]

Maybe fashion Angie? may be part of the fallout from Henry VIII having the rift with the Pope and the Catholic Church when he wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon and all things foreign became taboo and we became very nationalistic? possibly a perceived refinement in society as the years rolled on based on that? it might have been seen as not British by us peasants and just fell out of use? the aristocracy had access to all the food goodies and their 'niceness of manners' might have precluded anything like garlic that lingered on the breath and would have been seen as vulgar and not acceptable?

annieb64

Wasn't  there something The Pursuit  of Love about someone  using wild garlic during the war to pep up the food? Will have to try and find my copy of the novel

Floss

I seem to recall garlic was used as an antibiotic in the early 20th century by the Russians.