Gilroy Garlic Festival - 2009
We attended the Gilroy Garlic festival last weekend (July 26).
The city of Gilroy, in California, used to be the Garlic capital of the world. Each year, Americans consume around eighty million pounds of garlic. Most of the garlic consumed in US, is grown in Gilroy and other farms in California. The city hosts its yearly Garlic festival every July in the summer, and this year’s attendance was about 108,000.
During the festival, various cooking demonstrations are presented, to highlight the use of Garlic in dishes like soups, stews, salad dressings and vegetable dishes. The motto of the festival is “Eat, stink, and drinkâ€! Almost every category of dish is laced with the garlic flavor, and people stand in long lines to get a taste of different products. We too, are no different, and patiently waited to get a chance to taste the popular Garlic ice cream! What did I think of it? Not my cup of tea. I liked the garlic fries, but don’t think it is easy to enjoy the garlic flavor in any form of dessert. But, that is just my opinion. Volunteers and experts show you how to braid garlic bunches in beautiful braids to display. It was interesting to look at clothing and jewelry decorated with the garlic theme. At the end of the festival, I realized that the basic shape of garlic sort of got deeply engrained in my mind, and I had to do something about it, soon. And so, I created a rangoli with the basic shape of a garlic. Though it is not perfectly symmetrical, I was satisfied with the outcome, especially because, one of the design looks more like a piece of jewelry made with black Onyx.
Check it out at: http://www.ikolam.com/node/6671
Garlic is no longer on my mind, but black onyx is!! 
-Lata
Comments
Lata
Sun, 2009-08-02 14:06
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It Stinks in here!
jkmrao
Sun, 2009-08-02 16:01
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There is a proverb in Telugu which goes something like this - what a garlic can do to you, even your own mother cannot do (ulli chEsEdi talli kUDA chEyadu)! I remember an incident from my childhood. When I was a toddler, my mother used to fry daily a few cloves of gsrlic in ghee and used to force me to eat it. She wanted me to eat them so badly she used to tell that they were cashew nuts! It seems one day I tasted the real cashew nuts and afterwards it was quite difficult to cheat me. I used to tell her, it seems, get me the "other" cashew nuts
By the way, India is the second largest producer of garlic (about half of what the US produces).
Regards! - mOhana
jayamohan
Sun, 2009-08-02 21:05
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An apple a day keep the doctor away!
A garlic a day keep everyone away!
Sumathi.v
Sun, 2009-08-02 23:18
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Though it stinks it has amazing medicinal properties
jkmrao
Mon, 2009-08-03 10:05
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The medicinal properties of garlic were known to the ancient Indians. That is why they called it krimighna (destroying bugs). Except for the sour taste, it has all other rasas. It is called in Sanskrit as raSuna or laSuna. Just curious, is garlic (pUNDu) mentioned in ancient Tamil texts of the sangam era? ? The use of garlic in cooking seems to have started only after the Muslims entered India and along with them brought their middle eastern cuisine. As in the epic mahAbhArata, how to transform the laSunagandhi (smelling of garlic) into a yOjanagandhi?
Regards! - mOhana
anirudh
Mon, 2009-08-03 22:46
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mOhanaji.....i think in mahAbhArata it was Matsyagandhi (smell of fishes)
jkmrao
Tue, 2009-08-04 02:15
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aniruddhajI, the question is - just as matsyagandhi was transformed into jOjanagandhi, is it possble to transform the garlicgandhi into yOjanagandhi?
Regards! - mOhana
anirudh
Tue, 2009-08-04 10:20
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haha....yes mOhanaji, some small tries by our mothers to fry these in ghee (don't know what gandhi to call) and as you said make us to eat
Lata
Tue, 2009-08-04 10:42
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mOhanaji, that was very clever of your mom to trick you the way she did!
I bet she kept you away from cashew nut burfis for ever!
And I thought, it was kind of cruel of my mom to make us drink radish juice every sunday! No, no clever tricks, we had to drink straight up! We used to dread sundays.:)
Thank you for sharing a piece from your childhood days mOhanaji.
Jayaji, nice comment! In fact, this post stunk so much, looks like it drove away Rajam madam.
Anirudh avare and Sumathi, thank for taking the time to read and comment.