Garlic, that wonderful herb that adds great flavour to many savoury dishes and is known for its medicinal properties, was celebrated at Kamsack’s second annual Hint of Garlic Festival and Trade Show on Sunday.
The event, held at the Kamsack Legion Hall, was expanded somewhat from last year to include a small trade show, or “glorified farmers’ market,” said Jim Woodward, an organizer. “Nowadays one can find garlic in almost anything.”
Those attending the festival were able to see the different displays and enjoy sampling products made with garlic.
The event included eight tables, primarily of persons selling garlic and garlic products. One of the tables displayed and sold hand-crafted items made by former Kamsack resident Linda (nee Pennell) Oke of Flin Flon, Man.; another sold gluten-free products and a third sold items available for lunch.
A standing joke now is that Kamsack could be made the home of a garlic festival because of its water tower, which can be seen as resembling a head of garlic, Woodward said. “It’s something to think about.”
The United States is the sixth top producer of garlic, with much of its supply coming out of Gilroy, Calif., he said. Gilroy is self-proclaimed as the garlic capital of the world. The community holds its garlic festival on the final weekend of July.
There is also a National Garlic Day set aside in April, he said.
The number of people in Canada who also celebrate the bulb is growing, he said. Kamsack is no stranger to garlic, holding the moniker as the “Garden of Saskatchewan” and is the home of representatives of the many ethnic cultures that value the herb.
Garlic, which has been touted as a staple of many different cuisines, derives its name from the Anglo- Saxons, being derived from “gar” which means a spear, and “lac” a word for plant which refers to the shape of its leaves, he said.
Many people assume that garlic is garlic and one has either winter garlic or spring garlic, he said. They don’t realize that there are very many kinds of garlic because they seldom see more than one kind in the grocery store.
It is said that there are more than 600 cultivated sub-varieties in the world and they break down to being either soft-necked or hard-necked varieties, he said. Research has shown that 10 fairly distinct groups of garlic have evolved: fi ve very different hard-neck varieties called Porcelain, Purple Stripe, Marble Purple Stripe, Glazed Purple Stripe and Rocambole; three varieties of weakly bolting hardneck varieties that often produce soft-necks called Creole, Asiatic and Turban, plus two distinct soft-neck groups called Artichoke and Silverskin.
As an herb, garlic has been used in medicine for centuries, he said. The wide range of preventions and treatments of diseases and conditions attributed to garlic is unlimited.
