ROUSES_MarApr2021_Magazine-Pages

MARCH | APRIL 2021

THE GARLIC ISSUE

stinkin' good

RECIPES

(Yum!)

Oven Roasted Garlic

THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF GARLIC KEEPMORETHAN VAMPIRES AWAY

Our Crawfish Are From L ouisiana and So Are We. We grew up boiling on the Bayou! We use our Down the Bayou Seasoning mix, which gives our crawfish that true Cajun flavor. It’s a Rouse Family Recipe perfected over three generations.​

While supplies last. Weather permitting. Not available at all stores. Check Rouses for market prices on Crawfish.

Visit us online at www.rouses.com

PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES

​HOT FROM THE POT

By Donny Rouse, CEO, 3 rd Generation

Peak crawfish season starts now, which means crawfish are just the right size for boiling. We’ll sell more than two million pounds of Louisiana crawfish before the end of June. We have special boiling rooms in most of our stores, and we park custom-made boiling trailers at some locations so we can cook up to 3,000 pounds at a time. We even have crawfish drive-thrus in some of our parking lots, so you can get crawfish without ever going in the store. We have customers all over the Gulf Coast who come by each day to get a few pounds hot from the pot. Clearly, you don’t have to be from Louisiana to love Louisiana crawfish: We sold nearly a quarter of a million pounds in our Alabama stores last year. Of course, we always start with the best crawfish, but the key really is our seasoning. Last year, we finally packaged it. Our Down the Bayou Seafood Mix is seasoned with lemon and onion and just the right amount of granulated garlic. I use the mix whether I’m boiling at home or at the camp. And I always add a ton of whole heads of garlic to the pot. It gets super soft and soaks up all of that spicy crawfish boil flavor. When you squeeze the bulb, the cloves pop right out, so it’s easy to smear them on crackers or potatoes. That’s always been one of my favorite ways to eat garlic.

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Red Beans & Rice Mondays began in the 19th century as a way for New Orleans families to make a simple, delicious meal during the busiest day of their week. Easy to cook and easier to love, the dish is now a beloved Louisiana staple and perfect for any busy schedule! Hearty red beans, smoked andouille sausage and fluffy rice. That’s a tasty trio that will make every Monday better.

Learn more about the tradition and find recipes at REDBEANS AND RICEMONDAYS .COM

look for local Louisiana brewed beer, wine and spirits in Rouse’s today

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MIKE STRAIN DVM, COMMISSIONER

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CLOVE CREW

BREAK OUT THE BREATH MINTS

Marketing & Advertising Director Tim Acosta

1 Donny Rouse

8 Chargrilled Oysters

Creative Director & Editor Marcy Nathan

5 Letter from the Editor Head to Toe 7 Hard-Pressed by Ali Rouse Royster

32 Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Art Director, Layout & Design Eliza Schulze

34 Garlic Confit

Illustrator Kacie Galtier

9 Cookin’ on Hwy 1 with Tim Acosta

Garlic Confit Butter

Creative Manager McNally Sislo

Classic Caesar Salad with Homemade Croutons

THE STINKING ROSE

36 Paella

Copy Editors Patti Stallard Adrienne Crezo

10 Garlic Sucks by David W. Brown 14 Keep More Than Vampires Away by Sarah Baird 17 Every Breath You Take by David W. Brown 22 Small Blessings by David W. Brown

38 Oven Roasted Garlic

Spicy Crawfish Boil Butter

Advertising Amanda Kennedy Harley Breaux

40 Spaghetti & Meatballs with Italian Sausage

Marketing Stephanie Hopkins Robert Barrilleaux

42 Shrimp Scampi

Garlic Bread

Nancy Besson Taryn Clement

44 Stuffed Artichokes​

25 Garlic Roots by Sarah Baird

MARCH | APRIL 2021

Mark your calendar! NATIONAL GARLIC DAY IS ON MONDAY, APRIL 19

THE GARLIC ISSUE

stinkin' good

RECIPES

(Yum!)

Oven Roasted Garlic

THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF GARLIC KEEPMORETHAN VAMPIRES AWAY

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OUR FAVORITE GARLIC DISHES

SEAFOOD BOIL “DOWN THE BAYOU”

If someone asked me five years ago to try garlic soup, I wouldn’t have believed it was a thing. I was convinced to try it while on vacation two years ago and it has been a household favorite ever since. Bonus: Vampires (and everyone else) will certainly stay six feet away from you after one bowl.​ – Kacie Galtier, Designer & Illustrator

Is there anything better than a crawfish boil in the springtime? I’m honestly not sure there is. Unless it’s a crawfish boil with garlic. As an early-30-something-year- old, I’ve finally reached the point of zero garlic breath shame...bring on the cloves! – Eliza Schulze, Art Director

I can’t have tomatoes at all or my stomach becomes a bubbling cauldron of magma. So garlic butter has been a beacon of hope in being able to enjoying pizza again. My favorite toppings combo is garlic butter, mozzarella, chicken, and bacon with ranch dressing for dipping. – McNally Sislo, Creative Manager

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR BRANDS AT WWW.ROUSES.COM

I am one of those women who absolutely has to have a pedicure, even in winter. I have pretty feet—no hammer toes, crossover toes, or long toes that stretch past the other shorter ones. I could skip the polish and be fine. Still, twice a month, I go to Cindy’s Nails to get my hands and feet done. LETTER FROM THE EDITOR HEAD TO TOE By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

and the next thing you knew, my friend David—who was very well-connected—would be on the phone getting us a table.

Someone (usually someone pregnant) would volunteer to drive so the rest of us could drink, and we’d be on our way. We could tell you what we were going

to order before we even got to the Huey P. Long Bridge: Chicken a la Grande, of course, tossed salad with crabmeat, Spaghetti Bordelaise, Oysters Mosca. They cook everything to order at Mosca’s, and everything has garlic in it. I was a child when I first began going to Mosca’s. My dad, an attorney, had once represented a client against Carlos Marcello, who was thought to be the mob boss of New Orleans. Marcello had been convicted in the Brilab corruption and labor racketeering case, and my older sister Nancy, who’d seen The Godfather , was convinced she was going to find a horse’s head in her bed. (Marcello was the landlord of Mosca’s.) The stretch of highway in front of the restaurant was quiet and dark back then, and we’d make up stories about bodies buried in Avondale (Nancy wasn’t the only one with a vivid imagination in our family). None of these stories were true, of course. Carlos Marcello was just a tomato salesman, and there weren’t arms and legs of victims in the swamps of Avondale, just six to 10 garlic toes in the Chicken a la Grande. Want the recipe for Mosca’s Chicken a la Grande? Visit our website and type “Chicken a la Grande” into the search bar at the top of the page. Enjoy!

I always take a book to read, but instead I usually end up looking at my phone—or worse, working. I was mid-pedicure and proofing the first few stories for this issue when I glanced at my feet and remembered, appropriately, that garlic cloves are also called toes. TOES! As in, “This little piggy went to Rouses Markets, this little piggy stayed home…” Which of course begs the question, why do we call a bulb of garlic a head of garlic and not a foot, or even a hoof? One of the stranger things I learned while researching this issue is that you can taste garlic with your feet. Garlic contains a molecule called allicin—it’s what gives garlic its unique odor. Allicin can penetrate your skin, even the skin in your feet. Once it seeps into your bloodstream, it can travel all of the way to your mouth and nose. Perhaps there should be a toenail polish color called Stinking Rose. It’s not just your breath that can give away what you’ve recently eaten—or rubbed on your feet. Garlic gets into your sweat. If you’ve ever worked out with someone who had Chicken a la Grande a day or two before, you know exactly what I mean. Chicken a la Grande is perhaps the most famous dish at Mosca’s, a roadhouse restaurant on Highway 90 in Avondale on the West Bank of NewOrleans. There was a time in my life when someone could just mention Mosca’s,

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Authentic Italian pasta, no passport required.

SHRIMP THIS GOOD COULD ONLY COME FROM THE GULF COAST.

Local Fishers David & Kim Chauvin of Dulac, LA

PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES

HARD–PRESSED

By Ali Rouse Royster, 3 rd Generation

E ven if you pressed me, I’d have trouble thinking of a dish that wouldn’t benefit from a clove or two of garlic. My favorite crockpot pork roast basically just requires poking holes in the pork and stuffing them with cloves of garlic. I think it’s seven cloves, or maybe 15. Twenty-five? I’m not sure, but it’s a lot. I love garlic’s versatility. It truly works with everything. Chicken? Cook it in garlic. Steak? Pile some garlic on top. Salad? Potatoes? Shrimp? Pasta? You know it: Garlic makes it all better. French bread and garlic? Name a better duo. Rub a few cloves of garlic all over that toast. (Fun fact: My kids associate spaghetti and garlic bread so strongly that they call it “spaghetti bread.” I don’t want the word “garlic” to throw them, so I now call it that, too.) I use garlic just about every day. But I hate the preparation of it; every step of garlic prep is a hassle. I even hate having to break off a clove. And if the clove I’ve painstakingly removed seems small, I double my trouble and use two instead. Is this right? I have no idea. What constitutes a “regular-sized” clove? Again, no clue. Worse, peeling the little paper peelings off. What. A. Pain. They get everywhere and stick to everything, including my fingers, the knife, the cutting board, the countertops, random passersby…but somehow, paradoxically, they’re hard to get off the cloves. What witchcraft is this? Don’t even get me started on having to chop those tiny little buggers. I can barely get through a rough chop, and

if the recipe calls for minced garlic, I will audibly sigh. (I can be dramatic.) After trying hard not to cut my fingers off, I then have to get all the garlic off the knife blade, where the majority of my sort-of-chopped clove has stuck. Absolutely ridiculous. You might be thinking, “Why hasn’t she tried that trick I’ve seen on TikTok?” Well, y’all, I have. I’ve tried it all. All those hacks that look too good to be true are usually internet magic. And internet magic is just regular magic with Likes and Retweets: Nine times out of 10, it really is too good to be true, but now it has a bunch of hearts to trick you into thinking it isn’t. As a rule, I am opposed to single-use kitchen tools because a) they take up space, b) they are usually a pain to clean, and c) you can just as easily do it the old- fashioned way. I have wasted more money than I care to admit on magic garlic processors, and every single one has ended up in the donation pile. I’ve chopped garlic. I’ve minced garlic. I’ve peeled, pressed, grated, smashed and pureed garlic. What I will never do, though, is stop cooking with garlic. As in any true love-hate relationship, my love (for garlic) outweighs my hate (for preparing it). And at least garlic doesn’t make me cry, like onions do. Does Facebook have any tricks for dealing with onion tears? Let me know!

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Chargrilled Oysters Serves 4

HOW TO PREP: Heat a gas or charcoal grill to 450°F. Shuck the oysters and place them in a pan of ice on the half shell to keep chilled. In a small saucepan over low heat, gently melt the butter with the fresh garlic, lemon pepper seasoning, dried oregano and Cajun Power Garlic Sauce. Remove from heat when the butter is melted. Do not brown. Set aside. Working in batches, place oysters on the half shell over the hottest part of the grill. Add Rouses Seafood Seasoning to taste and a squeeze of lemon juice to each oyster. As soon as the oysters begin to turn opaque at the edges, spoon the seasoned butter into each shell. Add just enough

to overflow, being careful to keep your hands clear of flames; the butter mixture will flare when it touches the coals or grill. Continue cooking about five minutes or until the oysters puff up and curl at the edges. Top each oyster with a pinch each of Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Cook another 30 to 45 seconds or until the cheese is melted and golden brown. Remove the oysters from the grill with tongs. Serve on the shells with extra lemon wedges and warm Rouses French Bread.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 dozen large oysters

12 ounces (3 sticks) unsalted butter 2 tablespoons fresh garlic, finely minced or pressed 1 teaspoon lemon pepper seasoning 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano Dash Cajun Power Garlic Sauce Pinch Rouses Seafood Seasoning 3 fresh lemons 1 ounce finely grated Romano cheese 1 ounce finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Freshly sliced Rouses French Bread, for serving Additional fresh lemons, cut into wedges, for serving

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO

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COOKIN' ON HWY 1

I pick up our pre-peeled garlic at the store if I’m making something that calls for a lot of it, like my 5-5-5 jambalaya, which is always a big batch (get the recipe at www.rouses.com). But when I just need to use a few cloves, for something like my paella (see page 36) or spaghetti (see page 40), I break them off the heads we keep in the pantry. Smash the clove with the flat blade of a knife to loosen the skin, then use your hands to peel it away. If you’re not going to use the fresh peeled garlic right away, seal it in an airtight container or Ziploc bag to prevent the smell from permeating throughout the fridge. Nobody wants to drink garlic iced tea, not even me. Chopping the cloves into smaller pieces helps release their juices and oils, as well as adds more flavor. Mincing releases even more juices and oils, and adds an even stronger flavor. I’ve seen people on the Food Network use a cheese grater on garlic. I use minced or pressed garlic in my charbroiled oysters. Pressing garlic is any easy way to create a very fine mince. Garlic and oil go together like red beans and rice. When you’re sautéeing garlic in oil, start off at a low heat and gradually increase the heat as needed, because garlic burns quickly. When you’re browning several vegetables at once, wait to add the garlic last. Or , place the garlic on top of the bed of vegetables, so it doesn’t touch the actual hot pan. When in doubt, add more garlic. You can use stainless steel to get the smell of garlic off of your hands—even a fork works. SHOPPING LIST I put some form of garlic in almost everything I cook. If you’re looking for garlic flavor without the fuss, here are some other ways to enjoy it. Delallo Hot Pepper Garlic Sauce This mix of fresh garlic cloves, hot red chilies and parsley in Extra Virgin Olive Oil is an authentic Italian import, and one of my favorite garlic-infused condiments. Forget Ranch dressing; this is the pizza dip you’ve been missing. Cajun Power Garlic Sauce We’ve been selling this vinegar-based sauce since the early days when we just had stores in the Houma- Thibodaux area. It adds flavor without heat. I add a splash to my jambalaya, chili, sauce piquant—even my barbecued shrimp and charbroiled oysters. Because it’s vinegar-based, it’s also great for marinating and adding brightness to rich meats and poultry. If you want a hotter version, Tabasco makes something similar (but spicier) called Cayenne Garlic Sauce.

By Tim Acosta, Advertising & Marketing Director I f you grew up in South Louisiana, garlic is part of your DNA, like green onions, celery, bell peppers and the Saints. Here are a few tips I use when cooking on Hwy 1. It’s best to store garlic heads whole instead of breaking them apart. The garlic skin, that papery outside, keeps the cloves from drying out. Don’t put your garlic in the fridge, or it will develop shoots, or germs, which are edible but bitter. Instead, leave it on the counter or in the pantry; we store our garlic in an open basket with our onions. Stored right, your garlic will stay fresh for at least a few weeks.

We Dat’s Garlic Parmesan Seasoning This is my new favorite find in the spice aisle. It adds lots of garlic flavor. I used it on some homemade onion rings, and I bet it would be great for charbroiled oysters if you don’t feel like making your own mix. We also carry We Dat’s Original Flavored Seasoning blend at Rouses Markets.

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Q

GARLIC SUCKS

uarantine, day 1,534. There are 372 tiles on the ceiling of your apartment. There are 35,327 grains of rice in a two-pound bag. You have binge-watched

spirits who feasted on the blood of babies. The ancient Greeks had the lamia . Iceland had the draugar . The African asanbosam feasted on children. The Philippines had the mananangga l. During the same interval that vampires were giving Europeans the willies, they were giving us trouble here in North America, as well. Rhode Island and surrounding states experienced a vampire panic—really!— when tuberculosis swept through the region. So, naturally, Rhode Islanders dug up dead bodies, and those deemed unusually fresh— stay with me here—were sometimes de- capitated, sometimes had their unnaturally luscious organs extracted and burned, and sometimes (the lazy vampire hunter’s pre- ferred method, though I’m not judging) were just turned over. A “panic” implies a few hys- terical years, but this being New England, it lasted a full century. I’m sure they strapped a few witches to the pyre along the way for good measure. Those aren’t the only ways of killing a vam- pire, of course. Lord, no! Indeed, my world- traveling friends, if ever you run across a vampire in Europe, a good ol’ wooden stake through the heart will do the trick. (Pro tip: Ash and aspen are the best woods to use). Cornered by a vampire in Russia or Germa- ny? When swinging your stake, always aim for the mouth. The Romani used steel spikes, so keep that in mind, but have a wooden stake handy in case your vampire isn’t a lo- cal. When fighting vampires in the Balkans, you can shoot them dead or drown them or both. There seems to be universal agreement that a post-post-mortem dismemberment, incineration and burial with holy water will keep the vampire from rising again. Or keep them from moving around, anyway. THE COUNT Not only did Dracula not invent vampires, but it wasn’t even the first book on the subject. Ghostly versions of vampires appear in the Odyssey (which is about two and a half thousand years older than Dracula ). They appear in the 1819 novel The Vampyre by John Polidori and in the famously homoerotic 1872 novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Dracula , though, has endured in ways those novels have not. Bram Stoker is particularly inventive in his storytelling; the book is written in an epistolary format—a

By David W. Brown

the entirety of Netflix and Prime Video and have moved on to Hulu. None of your clothes fit and you now wear only king-size sheets draped like togas. You have not groomed in any way for six months. Your cat eyes you warily. What is it thinking? What is it thinking? It is plotting against you. Do not let it succeed. You have vacuumed your ceiling fan three times. You lose 500,000 dead skin cells every hour. If your pillow is more than two years old, 25% of its weight is from dust mites. (That figure is real.) You choose not to google what’s going on inside your mattress, and you are wise for that. You’re wondering about vampires. They can be slain by sunlight. They survive only by drinking blood. They reproduce (on Buffy the Vampire Slayer , anyway, which you binge-watched the first month of quarantine) by feeding from a human and then allowing said human to feed from them. They do not have souls. They are afraid of crosses. They are afraid of garlic. Wait—what? Maybe when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula , he had some sort of aneurysm midway through and just wrote “garlic,” and when he came back to his senses decided to go with it because paper wasn’t cheap. That makes more sense than the folklore, if we’re honest with ourselves. I mean, the whole vampire thing is a little weird. Dracula craves blood but has no heartbeat. (Does it just go in his stomach and sit there?) A stake through his nonworking heart kills him. He can turn into a bat? Did his teeth just…grow in pointy? Even among all that, the garlic thing is strange. But there is a good explanation for it. A good enough one, anyway. HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE It’s easy to pin all this vampire business on Bram Stoker’s novel, but vampires as we know them roamed the Eastern European countryside and the Balkans in particular for a least a century before the publication of Dracula . It wasn’t just Europe, though. Every culture the world over has been plagued, apparently, with our pale, undead friends. Babylon was haunted by lilitu

Above, Dracula by Bram Stoker. Published by Archibald Constable and Company, Westminster (1897); opposite page, clockwise from top, Digitally restored bat engraving from a late 19th- century encyclopedia; rope of garlic hung from a wall to ward off evil; Bran Castle in Romania, commonly known as Dracula’s Castle, is often referred to as the home of the title character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula .

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collection of diary entries, newspaper accounts, letters, and even telegrams. During his lifetime, Stoker was known less as an author and more as the success- ful theatre manager he was. He ran the Ly- ceum Theatre in London, and represented actor Henry Irving, who was like the George Clooney of his day. Writing novels was just a way to make a little extra cash, and Dracula followed a pretty typical monster adventure formula that was popular in its day. (He basi- cally wrote a Marvel movie, complete with the heroes punching the bad guy at the end.) He drew on vampire folklore but really just wrote one hell of a thriller. The story involves one Jonathan Harker, an English lawyer retained by a Transylva- nian count named Dracula, who is seeking to buy a home in London. Harker, while at Dracula’s castle, encounters three lady vam- pires and barely escapes with his life. He ends up hospitalized. The count, meanwhile, his real estate paperwork squared away, sets sail for England. From here it’s a bit of a melodrama with Dracula, on arrival, turn- ing Harker’s fiancee’s best friend, Lucy, into a vampire. (The process is basically this: You get bit. You get sick. You die. You rise from the grave pale-skinned and thirsty for blood.) A professor named Abraham Van Helsing diagnoses Lucy’s condition. She dies but is later caught stalking children. Van Hel- sing and the Scooby Gang find her, stake her, stuff garlic in her mouth (garlic!) and bury her. Harker, back from the hospital, reveals

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that Dracula is a vampire, and Van Helsing devises a plan to kill him. The short, short ver- sion is that they all end up back in Transylva- nia, with Van Helsing killing the three lady vampires and Harker helping to take down the count. They live happily ever after. Dracula is really a much better book than this synopsis would suggest. The novel wasn’t a smash hit, but it was well-received by some pretty impressive names, including one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes novels. Bram Stoker died penniless, as all the best authors do. The novel might have faded into obscurity if not for a burgeoning film industry in Hollywood and a loophole in U.S. copyright law that placed the novel in the public domain years earlier than it should have been. Moviemak- ers could thus film all the Draculas they want- ed and not pay the Stoker estate a dime, so they did, and they didn’t. “Did you know that Dracula is based on Vlad the Impaler?” you interrupt. No, I didn’t, because that’s not quite accu- rate. The name “Dracula” was undoubtedly taken from Vlad III Dracula of Romania, but that’s about it. ( Dracula translates from Old Romanian as “son of the dragon,” though that is probably incidental.) Dracula’s origi- nal name in Stoker’s notes was—I cannot be- lieve this is real, but it is—Count Wampyre, which is like writing a book about were- wolves and calling the main character Bere- wolf. Stoker ran across the superior name while researching Transylvania and knew a good thing when he saw it. The original title of the novel was The Dead Un-Dead , and later, The Un-Dead . We know all this be- cause to make ends meet, Stoker’s widow had to sell his research notes at auction. They fetched two pounds. “But what about the garlic?” you ask. You’re just going to have to wait. I’m spinning a yarn here. Vampires are all over books, film and tele- vision, and to run through the list would be to fill about 10 of these magazines. But if you thought you would get through this piece without an overlong and loving mention of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer , you were mistaken. There are only two kinds of GARLIC AND VAMPIRISM: A HATE STORY

people in this world: those who have seen it and know that it is the best television series ever written, and those who have not seen it. If you know someone who has seen it and didn’t love it…well I’m not advising you to drive a stake through their (absent) heart, but I’m not saying don’t do it, either. The title really gives the game away. It’s a show about a vampire slayer named Buffy, and the entire series is an extended meta- phor for adolescence and adulthood. What makes the story and its titular character so compelling early on is that Buffy falls in love with a vampire named Angel—a vampire with a soul . Poor Angel. I rend my garments for Angel! For centuries, he was the evilest of all vampires, but after slaying a Roma family is cursed with a soul! Another century elaps- es with him now feeling guilt for all the evil he has done. But it gets so much worse, as there is a second part to his curse: If ever he experiences true happiness, he is doomed to lose his soul again. Then he meets Buffy, and trouble ensues. And oh, Buffy, forced to car- ry the weight of the world on her shoulders. No one can know her ancient mystical call- ing, and so she stares alone into the abyss every night, fighting the forces of darkness, an outcast among her peers, servant of a calling she did not seek or want. And then she begins a doomed romance with a man who cannot love her back. Over the course of the series, a little at a time, she sacrifices everything. But I have gotten carried away. You’re wondering about garlic and vampires. But first, some mind-blowing trivia. Vampires are sometimes depicted in fiction as having obsessive-compulsive disorder. This is why when Fox Mulder encountered one on The

X-Files , he spilled sunflower seeds on the floor in order to escape. The vampire had no choice but to pick up and count the sun- flower seeds, giving Mulder the distraction he needed. Why do I mention this? (Aside from it being one of the finest hours in the history of television, Buffy notwithstanding.) Because when you are watching Sesame Street , it is not coincidence that the Count is a vampire. Counting things is what he and his army of the undead do! Ah ah ah. In popular culture, modern depictions of vampires—including Dracula—haven’t had much use for the garlic rule. A good behead- ing, immolation or stake through the heart, sure—there are no better ways to kill the undead (and also the living, come to think of it). On television, the best way for a vam- pire to protect him- or herself is to be really popular with fans. Then nothing can kill you, as Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer can attest. (Even Dracula, who appeared in a single episode, as you recall from the binge, somehow managed to survive being staked— twice. We also learned in that episode that Buffy has a sister! And I know that’s a spoiler but the show is 21 years old. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father and Bruce Willis is a ghost. You’re late and that’s the price you pay.) Vampires fear garlic on Buffy. They do not fear it in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire . (An awful lot of vampire legends are dispatched in that novel, all dismissed as superstition and nonsense.) So what, exactly, is the deal with garlic? As it turns out, there are a few real-world reasons that vampires (assuming they are not real-world, which I am not doing) would

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fear garlic. First, it goes back to the history of vampires roaming the Balkan countryside. In the days of yore, farmers in the region would hang garlic to repel wolves. (Presum- ably because wolves have a keen sense of smell, though garlic is considered a natural repellent to all manner of creature.) When you’ve got a superstitious people, it’s only a short leap from wolf to werewolf—a creature that precedes even the vampire. It is likely that vampires just sort of inherited the garlic phobia. Moreover, there is another famed bloodsucker believed to be repelled by gar- lic: the mosquito. (There is zero science to back this up, though I’ve just written 2,000 words on how to kill vampires, so if you’re looking for science, this probably wasn’t the best use of your time.) Here in the South, we are world-class experts on mosquitoes, but we didn’t discover the things, and probably weren’t the first to come up with the (false) idea that mosquitoes hate them. They aren’t attracted to you after you’ve indulged in sug- ary treats, either, in case you were wonder- ing. And male mosquitoes don’t even drink blood. “Well,” you say to the walls as you close this magazine, “what an adventure that was. A fine way of spending 15 minutes of quar- antine.” You look at the clock. Time no longer has meaning, but you do it because it’s there. Only nine more hours left in the day. You flip through the magazine. “Did David write anything else?” you ask (this time to your potted plant, Shakira). Ah, David did! More things about garlic. And you smile. Clearly, he is losing his mind, too. In our third year of quarantine, with no television left to watch, there is only Rouses magazine. You look at your pillow. It seems a little heavy. You look out your window. The sun is setting. Which means vampires will come. You pick up a garlic bulb. You will be ready.

SICILIAN EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL COLD EXTRACTED

David W. Brown is a freelance writer whose work appears in The Atlantic , The New York Times , Scientific American and The New Yorker . His next book, The Mission: A True Story, a rollicking adventure about a motley band of explorers on a quest to find oceans on Europa , is in bookstores now. Brown lives in New Orleans.

VOTED BEST IN THE WORLD AT THE 2020 NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL OLIVE OIL COMPETITION

E very few years, there’s another ultra- hyped superfood on the market ready and able to save us from the repercussions of too many late nights or couch snacks. The Brazilian acai berry swooped into the spotlight in the mid-2010s with its nu- trient-dense, antioxidant-rich pulp that can help reduce cholesterol and increase brain functioning. It was touted by everyone from Oprah to local pharmacists. Turmeric—a staple ingredient in cur- ries—recently took its turn as an Instagram- influencer favorite thanks to its powerful anti-inflammatory effects and potential to lower the risk for heart disease. From golden milk (a traditional Indian drink that combines turmeric, coconut milk, spices and a sweet- ener) to spicy chickpea stews, this health- ful member of the ginger family radiated a sunset-colored hue across all social media channels for a spell. But even if you’ve never dabbled in super- food favorites like chia seeds, breadfruit and ancient grains, you’re probably using one of the oldest and intensely studied superfoods already. And it’s not a mystery fruit from a faraway land (at least not anymore); it’s a centuries-old, good-for-you ingredient in dishes that regularly grace our tables. In everything from Bolognese to roast chicken, you’ll find garlic. A go-to curative in Egyptian, Indian and Chinese cultures for over 2,000 years, heal- ers across the globe have treated pungent garlic bulbs as a kind of cure-all pharmacy crammed into a tiny package. Since it was first cultivated in Middle Asia, garlic quickly became called upon to help with everything from balance and endurance (Egyptians) to skin diseases and rheumatism (Indians) to ul- cers and spider bites (Slavic cultures). “Pliny, [the] ancient Roman naturalist and physician, listed 61 diseases that could be effectively treated with garlic,” writes Dr. Paavo Airola in 1983’s The Miracle of Garlic . “He said, ‘Garlic has such power- ful properties that the very smell of it drives away serpents and scorpions.’ Pliny [also] claimed that garlic has curative power in all respiratory and tubercular ailments.” In the United States, the national awaken- ing to garlic as not only a pungent ingredient, but a boon for the body, ran in tandem with the environmentally conscious “back to the land” movement of the 1970s, when health food stores became more than just one-off

KEEP MORE THAN VAMPIRES AWAY

By Sarah Baird

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anomalies in major cities and organic pro- duce began to find its way into shoppers’ recyclable tote bags en masse. Books and pamphlets—many with funky cover art and titles like The Garlic Book: Nature’s Power- ful Healer —helped add a new dimension to a familiar food and encouraged the late 20th-century rise in consumers hungry to learn more about the connection between what we eat and how we feel. The curi- ous experimented with drinking garlic juice shots; garlic in pill form was introduced as a dietary supplement; and there was even— briefly—an entire fad diet centered around garlic and other superfoods known as the “Airola optimum diet.” But there’s no need to take an ingredient as delicious and fundamental to modern cui- sine as garlic and remove all the fun from it by ingesting a pill or treating it as a mealtime health requirement. While you’re perusing this head-to-toe list of ways—both current and ancient—garlic has been used as a pre- ventive measure or curative treatment, pat yourself on the back for every just-one-more garlic knot or extra clove in your barbecue shrimp. You were taking care of your health and didn’t even know it! (And, of course, if you’re thinking about adding garlic to your diet as a health aid, make sure to chat with your doctor first.) HEAD There’s no lack of recent studies about how good garlic is for you—between 1998 and 2008 alone, there were over 1,000—and many of them focus on the ways in which this odorous ingredient can help protect and support our brains. A 2018 study from scien- tists at the University of Louisville found that consuming raw garlic could slow the effects of age-related memory loss, particularly in elderly patients with Alzheimer’s or Parkin- son’s diseases. “Our findings suggest that dietary adminis- tration of garlic containing allyl sulfide could help maintain healthy gut microorganisms and improve cognitive health in the elderly,” writes co-lead researcher Dr. Jyotirmaya Behera. The organosulfur compounds found in garlic have been identified as effective in destroying glioblastomas, a type of deadly brain cancer. And on the mental health side of things, garlic has been considered a tool

such ailments. Many experts in the health food world swore by garlic’s ability to aid digestion and absorption of nutrients like calcium and magnesium. BONES, JOINTS & MUSCLES If your joints are prone to creaks and aches, garlic should be part of your natural remedy tool kit. Research from a 2018 trial shows that taking a garlic supplement for 12 weeks helped reduce pain severity for those with degenerative joint damage in their knees. And a recent study in mice (no human trial yet, alas) has proven that garlic can also increase estrogen in females, leading to greater bone strength and, potentially, reduced risk of osteoporosis. PREVENTIVE CARE Achoo no more! A recent lab study has shown that people who consume garlic from November through February have fewer instances of the common cold than people who don’t, thanks to the bulb’s immunity- boosting power. This makes scientific good on similar old wives’ tales from grannies across the Ozarks and Appalachian Mountains who have sworn by garlic as a winter-time remedy for centuries. And in the Greco-Roman era, garlic was always being doled out ahead of major events: before going into battle to preserve strength, as a way to stave off seasickness and even as an aphrodisiac for those in need on their wedding nights. Truly, is there anything garlic can’t do? Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask , which was released in summer 2019. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in The New York Times , Washington Post , Saveur , Eater , Food &Wine and The Guardian , among others. Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans alt-weekly, Gambit Weekly , where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.

for assisting in the treatment of depression in China for thousands of years.

SKIN Snakebites are probably less of a problem for us than they were for the ancient Greeks, but in a pinch it might be useful to know that they swore by garlic as a curative for this extreme injury. (They also used garlic for ulcers and skin crusts, and the Chinese used it to treat leprosy.) More common to our modern era, many people consume garlic to fight off acne, thanks to its anti- inflammatory and anti-microbial properties, and the Farmers' Almanac even suggests using antifungal garlic skin to treat athlete’s foot. HEART The positive impact garlic has on the health of our tickers is—dare I say— heart ening. Garlic has been proven to be a key ingre- dient in preventing (or even reversing) high blood pressure, with one major study finding that garlic supplements lowered blood pres- sure and reduced the risk of heart disease by between 16 and 40 percent. What’s more, garlic has been shown to help reduce cho- lesterol in patients, with 44 percent of clini- cal trials since 1993 indicating a reduction in the ability of harmful platelets to aggregate and in the total cholesterol for garlic-eaters. STOMACH AND INTESTINE Most Americans aren’t dealing with intes- tinal parasites in the year 2021, but if we were, we could take the advice of Assyrians, who swear by garlic as a means of curing

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I want to take you back to the days before Crest and Colgate, when the rotting of teeth was just part of life. To a time when dentistry was done with hammers, and your breath was just your breath…and that was that. It wasn’t that long ago. When reading novels or histories, consider that if Scarlett O’Hara or Jane Eyre or Abraham Lincoln or William Shakespeare said hello to you, you’d immediately want to set yourself on fire. Woe to the time-traveling historians assigned to the 19th century or earlier! Your morning breath in 2021 was better than the absolute best day that Cleopatra ever knew. Helen of Troy’s face launched a thousand ships—but from a distance. From an olfactory standpoint, Marie Antoinette’s last day was the best of her life. Nary a pearly white in a single Founding Father’s head; it was sea to shining sea of hideous flaxen grins. Here is a terrifying statistic. In 1900, only 7% of Americans brushed their teeth regularly. Today, according to Johnson & Johnson, 68% of Americans do. Just to be clear here: 32% of Americans today are not brushing their teeth regularly. That number is large enough that some of you are reading this very magazine, and I just have to know: WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING? I am growing weary of wearing my mask every- where, but now I’m hoping we never stop. The reason so few people were brushing their teeth at the turn of the last century was the nature of toothpaste. It was gross: a jar of tooth powder shared by the family (or families), into which you plunged a damp toothbrush before sticking it in your own mouth. Everybody was double-dipping, and nobody was OK with it, and I’m with you there. Antibiotics hadn’t yet been invented, and who knows what was being passed around. Since then, scientists have delivered tubes of toothpaste unto the world like Moses presenting the 10 Commandments. There’s just no excuse for not using them. Even in 1900, though, dental hygiene was not new. The rudimentary toothbrush is about 5,000 years old. Cultures and nations going back to ancient Egypt used twigs, generally, sharpened to get in between teeth. Tooth powder is even older than that: about 7,000 years old—a millennium more ancient than the pyramids. At the time, it was made from, among other things, ox hooves, burned eggshells and myrrh. (Perhaps the wise men wanted Jesus to have good hygiene?)

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE By David W. Brown

The Greeks and Romans tried to improve on it, adding bones and oyster shells as an abrasive. (Here I invite you to consider not only how this affected your tooth enamel, but how it affected your gums.) In the early 1700s in France, urine (your own) was considered to be a pretty good option. Sensodyne it wasn’t, but at least they were trying. Oral hygiene has always been serious business. On some level, people have always recognized that dirty teeth are disgusting and bad breath a thing to solve. Assuming a standard level of halitosis for pre-Aquafresh civilizations, bad breath beyond that might have indicated health problems: respiratory issues, liver or kidney issues, or gastrointes- tinal distress. Early mouthwashes were wine based, which was on the right track, though wine does not contain enough alcohol to kill bacteria. Still, when they took a swig straight from the bottle first thing in the morning, it was just good hygiene and families applauded. When I do it, it’s a problem and there’s an intervention. Here’s a bit of trivia for you: Paul Revere was a dentist. He was more famously an engraver, of course, but the closer the colonies got to revolution, the less valuable his services were. So he took up dentistry to make a little extra money. (It was, at the time, something of a trade, like being a roofer. You apprenticed for a bit and you were set.) World War II was a boon for oral hygiene in the United States. For one thing, soldiers weren’t given the choice to see military dentists: Before you shipped out, someone would be scraping and poking around in your head. This was new, and soldiers complained bitterly about it, but long after the war, such procedures—which included extractions, crowns and dentures—kept American teeth healthy beyond those of previous generations. The war was also good for dentists, who had to do an awful lot with very little, which ultimately improved their techniques. (When you have to extract a tooth but there are no painkillers, you need to be quick and efficient.) The entire profes- sion thus saw an upgrade, including the introduction of new drugs, treatments and practices. In short, when soldiers returned home after the war, they had better teeth and America had better dentists. Just as people have always wanted clean teeth, they’ve always wanted white teeth as

At left, “The Tooth-Ache, or, Torment & Torture” was drawn and etched by by the British satirical artist Thomas Rowlandson in 1823; above, “Dr. E. L. Graves Unequaled Tooth Powder for Health and Beautiful Teeth” was produced and sold from 1906 to 1916.

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well. That is why urine was the Crest White- strips of its day; the ammonia found in its chemistry had some whitening properties. When that didn’t work, teeth could be filed and treated with nitric acid. As for bad breath, its causes are typically born in the mouth, and usually from poor dental hygiene. Bad breath typically means a type of bacteria has found a place it loves—your mouth—and it’s making babies there. The name of this creature is Solobac- terium moorei and, believe it or not, scientists only learned of the culprit in 2008, which is absurdly recent. Other causes of bad breath include the foods you eat; the gum disease gingivitis (which 1980s television taught me is, along with quicksand, among the most pressing problems a person faces in life); stress; booze; some sort of tonsil, esopha- geal or stomach problem; or maybe kidney failure. I would get that checked out just in case. If you’ve just landed on Earth and need some pointers, here’s how to keep your teeth clean. STEP 1. Buy a toothbrush. Rouses has so many to choose from that it can be overwhelming, I admit. I suggest you go with the red one. STEP 2. Buy toothpaste. Get the kind with the most stripes, or maybe the one with sparkles. Eenie-meenie-miney-moe it. You really can’t go wrong here. Now I know what you’re thinking, having just read that: Rouses is in league with Big Dental and it’s all buy buy buy when it comes to mouthcare. Reader, I assure you we are not. But we do care about your health and your enjoyment of food. Your bad breath is affecting your senses of taste and smell, and your teeth are going to rot out of your head, and how do you expect to eat from the Rouses smokehouse department, where you get bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers and bacon-wrapped stuffed chicken thighs? You can’t gum bacon, fella.

this stuff, offering angles for brushing and all these crazy instructions. I don’t think we have to worry about all that today. You’re reading a grocery store magazine to learn how to brush your teeth. There’s really no wrong way to do it at this point, as long as you scrub the entirety of every tooth. Just really shove that toothbrush into your yuckmouth and give it the business. STEP 9. Spit. Don’t swallow toothpaste. Spit that nastiness into the sink, and wash it down the drain, you animal. When I was a kid, I slept at a friend’s house and he and his kid brother swallowed their toothpaste as they brushed, and 30 years later I’m still thinking about it. Don’t do that. STEP 10. Brush your tongue. Oh, you’re not done with that toothbrush just yet. You’re going to town on that tongue. Keep going. Just all of it, until it looks like—well until it doesn’t look like whatever it looks like right now. Make it look like everyone else’s tongues. And get far back there, too. STEP 11. Rinse. (Even I didn’t realize there were so many steps to this.) Rinse that fresh, minty mouth out with a whole bunch of water. Just swish it around and let the hydro- dynamic features of your newly flossed and buffed teeth really turn your mouth into a waterpark. Spit out the water and rinse that sink again, because nobody wants to see that gunk when it dries. STEP 12. Mouthwash. The final step. Pour about a capful of Listerine into your mouth, and swish it around for 30 seconds, and gargle too, like on TV. (I don’t have enough time to explain how to gargle.) Spit it in the sink, don’t forget to rinse it—I won’t tell you again. Congratulations! You will now have a much easier time making friends. Go ahead and toss your facemasks in the laundry, too. They probably need a good cleaning of their own.

STEP 4. Go ahead and pick up some mouthwash, too. The yellow Listerine will kill any microbe within a mile of your mouth. Get the big one.

STEP 5. Go home. Please don’t brush your teeth in the health products aisle.

STEP 6. Floss. You’re probably thinking, No way, man—that’s advanced level oral hygiene. But stay with me here. When I was in high school, my best friend’s dad was a dentist, and I asked him once if he flossed every day, and he said he did, and I found that hard to believe. But he gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “David,” he said, “go home and floss your teeth and smell the floss after. If you’re OK with how it smells, don’t worry about it.” Well of course I did that the moment I got home. In short, I have not missed a single day of flossing since 1996. The American Dental Association has this whole long thing about how to floss, and no one’s got time to read that. Here’s the short, short version: Hold that string tight and run it up and down between each of your teeth, and if you run out of teeth, floss behind the back ones, too. I’m no dentist but that’s pretty much the whole thing.

STEP 7. Apply toothpaste to tooth- brush. Just go wild.

STEP 3. Get floss. Close your eyes and point at the rack. Now open your eyes. The one you’re pointing at? That’s the right one.

STEP 8. Brush. Again, the American Dental Association is really pedantic about

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��aghe�i & �auce � ust like N ��� � ��e.

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO

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Gumbo?

Add garlic.

jambalaya?

Add garlic.

Boiled crawfish?

Hurl as many

bulbs into the

pot as you can

carry home

from Rouses...

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