National Garlic Day – Really?

garlic, Reflections,

IMG_0586

When I got out of the shower this morning I discovered that I had a voicemail from my dad wishing me a “Happy National Garlic Day”. I honestly had no idea it was National Garlic Day. It wasn’t marked on my calendar and our local news show had failed to report it.

I decided to do an internet search to learn more.

According to this National Garlic Day is celebrated every year on April 19, and it should be celebrated by eating lots of garlic and learning about the benefits of eating garlic. The page notes that the origin of this “National Day” could not be determined and that there was no evidence that it had ever been recorded by congress or proclaimed by the president as such. Sorry, if you were hoping to get holiday pay I am afraid you are out of luck. However, if you decide to begin your celebration early with a garlic omelet or smoothie for breakfast your boss just might decided to give you the day off. 😉

Now I am not usually a person to rant, so this is probably the closest you will come to reading a rant on my blog. I just want to know who comes up with this stuff??? As a garlic grower I certainly support celebrating garlic by eating lots of it and learning about the health benefits, and if it takes a designated day to get people to do that then so be it. The thing that I am not ok with is the USA celebrating National Garlic Day in April!

April is probably the WORST time of year to celebrate “National Garlic Day”. Maybe you never thought about it because when you go to the grocery store you can usually buy fresh bulbs of garlic anytime of the year, but the truth is most of the garlic sold in the United States is imported. If we are celebrating “National Garlic Day” shouldn’t we be celebrating by eating garlic that is grown in the USA???

In the USA garlic is generally planted in the fall and harvested in summer (mid to late July in our area). After it is harvested garlic is generally cured or allowed to dry for several weeks before it is sold. This is when it is freshest. If garlic is properly cured and stored it will remain fresh for between 3 and 8 months depending on the variety. As garlic begins to shrivel or sprout it is still edible but I certainly would not consider it fresh. Unless you grow your own garlic it would be very difficult to find USA grown garlic this time of year. So why on earth are we celebrating National Garlic Day today? The only thing we are doing with our garlic crops right now is praying for the weather to warm up and dry up so that we may have a bountiful crop this year.

In my opinion, if anyone cares, the optimal time to celebrate “National Garlic Day” would be in early September, when most growers in the USA have had time to harvest and cure their garlic and are then able to take it to market. Garlic growers could then use the “Holiday” to teach people about how garlic is grown, about different varieties of garlic, about ways to cook with garlic, as well as the health benefits all while selling fresh locally grown garlic. Doesn’t this make more sense???

I’m am certain my rant is not going to change anything but thanks for listening and I sure would like to hear what you think.

 

24 thoughts on “National Garlic Day – Really?”

  3. You should find out who’s in charge of that crap and send them a seething letter to let them know how wrong they are. But you are correct, have the holiday when it benefits OUR crop, not import crop. Dumb people.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Well, I shall go out to my garlic patch and wish it a merry day. Then perhaps crack open a jar of last year’s pickled garlic because I certainly don’t have any fresh this time of year 😛

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Thanks Graci! It’s new to me too. It apparently is a USA thing – it seems there is a national day for everything in this country. I think we will wait to really celebrate until July when we harvest this years crop. Hopefully it will be a good one.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Best wishes for the harvest! I haven tried garlic on my garden. And I might skip it this year again as we will be away for a long time next month.. It’s nice to know about this National Garlic Day, besides garlic is one of the most used in cooking. 🙂

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Thank you. Once garlic is planted in the fall you can pretty much forget about it until spring when it starts coming up. Then keep it watered, give it a little fertilizer and keep the weeds down and it does pretty well.
        Yes we do use a lot of garlic in our cooking.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. LOL. I have never tried growing garlic…..I like it but my husband has a real pest on it. When I told him it was national garlic day he looked at me like I had sprouted two heads. Guess if I celebrate I will be celebrating alone.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. LOL. I think I had a similar reaction to your husband. It seems we have random “National Days” for everything.
      People seem to have very strong feeling about garlic – either love it or hate it. Maybe I should be grateful we didn’t have garlic haters show up to protest our garlic. LOL

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      3. I hadn’t heard that. That’s crazy! Did they say how to celebrate? I might need to carry around a dictionary in case people are using words I don’t understand. LOL!

        Liked by 1 person

I would love to hear from you.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s