petermorwood:

celtic-romulan:

pissyeti:

cooking style: i no longer know what a responsible amount of garlic is

THIS IS SO ME. 

Coming from an Italian background, there’s NEVER enough garlic. Because whenever I see that there’s garlic in some recipe, I’m just like

Of course, I end up regretting it because it makes the house, my clothes and my breath stink for days. :3

That GIF… 😀

My average garlic input to a recipe calling for “some garlic” is about 6 cloves – sliced, chopped, minced, whatever. Often it’s a lot more. Yet the “makes things stink for days” has never happened to me, which is weird. And it’s not as if @dduane​ wouldn’t tell me, because she would. A lot.

I / we haven’t had breath-skin-clothes problems even after her chicken with lemon and 40 cloves of garlic (where 40 cloves is regarded as
a suggestion, a good idea or a good start). This may be because D’s version involves parboiling the unpeeled cloves in two changes of water then poaching them in chicken stock, which reduces a lot of the GARLIC! punch and turns them into a root vegetable.

That said, the pungency has only been stunned, not removed, and you’ll fart in technicolour for the next day or so. But so will everyone else who ate it, so you won’t play Merrie Melodies for a limited-range wind instrument all by yourself…

Oddly enough, ODing on raw garlic – as happens when a recipe needs six cloves and there’s about ten left on the bulb, so meh, use ‘em all – doesn’t have this effect, at least not on me.

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And I have never yet been bitten by a vampire, not even the very polite vampires during Zurich Fasnacht who flapped up to us and asked nicely.

That was one of the stranger late-night conversations I’ve ever had (and after 35 years of science fiction / fantasy conventions, I’ve had some strange ones.)

Flap-flappity-flap went the opera cloaks of several vampy cosplayers as they
swept down on us, looking like a bunch of Pratchett Black Ribboners out
on the town.

“Entschuldigen,” said one of them, “wir möchten Ihre Blut trinken, bitte.”

“Beg pardon, we’d like to drink your blood, please.”

It was the “beg pardon” and “please” that got us going. But it was the 9% abv Aventinus beers I’d been drinking that made me bold enough to try continuing the conversation in German. 8-o

A bit of reconstruction helped by D’s equally-imprecise memory

claims it went something like this, though I bet I wasn’t anything like as clear…

“Gerne, aber vor wenige Minuten war ich gefressen Knoblauchwurst im Zeughauskeller.”  – (No probs, but a few minutes ago I was scoffing garlic sausage in the Zeughauskeller.)

“Ach, Knoblauch ist nicht

für uns einer guter Geschmack.” – (Ooh, garlic’s not a good flavour for us.)

“Schade. Ich habe auch einen Maas starkes Bier geschluckt, so mit meine Blut, keine Autofahren später. Oder fliegen wie eine betrunkene Fledermaus.” – (Too bad. I also put down a litre of very strong beer, so with my blood, no car-driving later. Or flying about like a drunken bat.)

“Alkohoi ist kein Problem, aber wir müss dein Gewürz vermeiden! Tschüüüss!” – (Alcohol’s not a problem,

but we’ll have to avoid your seasoning! Byeee!)

And off they flapped along the Limmatquai and up into Niederdörfli, laughing with, I hope not at, the odd foreigner and his odder German while the other foreigners went “Duh?” and wondered if what had just happened had actually happened. I’ve never spoken so much of a foreign language at one time either before or since (thank you Aventinus, I think) and I have a feeling there’d have been no problem if I’d stuck to English.

For some situations

the word “surreal” is inadequate, and if our friend Kimmie hadn’t been there as a rather confused independent witness who confirmed the incident next morning at breakfast, D and I would have concluded we’d dreamed the whole thing or just blamed it on the beer.

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So there: over-use of garlic not only seasons food, it prompts musical interludes and prevents an attack by polite vampires. It also prompts linguistic adventurism
among the mildly inebriated and an occasional attack of anecdotage…

You could blame the beer for that as well, except that I’ve drunk nothing but tea all day.

The spaghetti alio-olio-pepperoncini I just had for supper, however, included a round dozen cloves of alio and four bird’s-eye
pepperoncini, so I’ve got a very pleasant endorphin buzz on board, my
mouth is like an overflow of lava,

and that GIF…

…is right on the button. :->