The garlic root holds a sacred position in my parents’ household. As I reminisce on any scan of the pantry in my childhood, I can practically see them: the white, peeling bodies of heads of garlic perched upon a container of Morton salt or balanced upon the white metal canister where my parents kept their hiking snacks. Any trip to that pantry could always be counted upon to include the sight of papery bulbs hiding somewhere in the colorful and overstimulating chaos of shelves piled high with unrefrigerated foods. I can remember looking up from my small body, stubbornly planted in the center of our walk-in pantry, and I can conjure deep memories of staring up, up, up at those looming shelves. And, always, there were little bulbs of garlic root somewhere – if I was to just look long and hard enough. I can remember spotting them in my peripheral vision as my little hands went to reach for my favorite flavor of Cliff Bar before a soccer game or as my teenage hands grabbed a bag of flour to bake my sister’s tenth birthday cake. No matter what, garlic was always present.
“Always double the amount of cloves a recipe calls for, Sasha.” I can still hear my parents’ voices echoing in my ears as they first introduced me to the culinary arts.
As I grew, I gained a deep love and appreciation for communal meals as my family was deeply committed to our routine of regular family dinner. Despite my parents’ busy careers, my incessant soccer practices, and the ceaseless onslaught of math exams and doctors appointments, we always made time for dinner together. Shared meals were ingrained in my childhood – an absolute given and an integral piece of my life. My parents expected our presence at the dinner table every single night – and I upheld my end of the bargain. Since before I could walk and up until the day before I left for college, my butt was firmly planted in those dining room chairs almost every evening, face turned towards a plate gluttonously overflowing with home-cooked food and body pillared by the people forming my support system.
Also present at every dinner were the sauteed remnants of the garlic cloves extracted from our pantry. An intrinsic piece of every meal consumed, from pasta to risotto to barbecued chicken, garlic was never a flavor to be missed. And, as we prepared a meal together every night, garlic was solely crushed one way in my childhood household: a hyper-specific kitchen item, sold for one use and one use only: crushing garlic cloves.
And boy, did we use it.
I cannot remember when we obtained this garlic crusher – without origin, this tool came into our lives and I’m almost certain my family couldn’t comprehend a reality without it. I can remember with precision the ritual performed when it came time to prep garlic: pulling cloves from the head, carefully slicing the ends off each clove, applying pressure with the flat portion of a blade, peeling the papery skin away, and loading the naked, sticky cloves into our crusher. It was performed, as elucidated, virtually every night. It was one of the first moments that kicked off the process of cooking a meal to be eaten with my family, as garlic always enters a hot pan first. Thus, I can’t help but feel that every crushed garlic clove was in pursuit of meaningful time spent with my loved ones; each clove brought us closer to the culmination of our days: a warm meal on the table – shared between bouts of familial laughter, engaging philosophical discussions with my father, and words of wisdom slipping from the lips of my mother.
I cannot quantify the value of speaking soft words over a homemade meal with the people you love. I see now that every conversation provided an opportunity to learn more lessons than school has ever taught me by listening to my parents speak. I love hearing them reminisce on the hard-earned wisdom gained throughout their time on earth. I love the banter between my father and me, taking ceaseless jabs at each other like fighters in a ring. I love hearing my mother’s advice for problems that seem to consume my whole world but that her insights could solve in seconds. I love listening to my sister’s latest update on her High School drama while internally speculating on how much she just might be the one causing it.
And it all always started with the crushing of garlic. Everytime that garlic crusher was pulled from the drawer and placed upon the cool granite countertop, I knew what was lying in wait for me.
And that’s not to say that it was all beautiful and harmonious – just as with any family, we had our challenges. There were countless evenings where pulling out that garlic crusher meant starting on the road towards a hard conversation I didn’t want to have, sitting through clipped words snapped at each other on a long day, grappling with my sister’s or my own teenage angst, or choking down forkfuls of spinach in a new recipe my dad decided to try on a whim – one from his newfound “health” cookbook. Thus, as with anything in life, it wasn’t perfect.
But that’s where its beauty lies.
Without challenging conversations, occasionally shitty meals, or anxious tension that could be felt from down the block, I would have never learned how to be human. Without those meals, I would have never been able to know the true, expansive depths of familial love – the type that permeates bad days and poorly cooked spinach.
I could not be more grateful for my parents and their beloved garlic crusher. As I’ve matured and grown into the woman I am, the value of these dinners has grown exponentially. Now, every time I open my pantry cabinet in my small Berkeley kitchen and catch a glimpse of that papery white body perched upon my box of Morton salt, I can’t help but smile – for the value of a Penwarden family meal, one wrought with garlic, is not lost on me.
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