Garlic Soup

When I was younger, my foster mother was convinced that garlic was a cure-all for many different ailments. And she used to eat raw garlic every morning because she thought it would keep her healthy. She would tell the story of when she was a health care aide, that there was this elderly lady who would request garlic to eat every day and would go outside, no matter what the temperature was (and this was in Manitoba where the summers get quite hot and humid, and the winters get frigidly cold). And every single day she would go outside in a knitted sweater and sit on the bench outside of the nursing home, until the nurses would force her to come back inside. And she never got sick. I think this is why my foster mother would eat garlic every day. Because she thought it would keep her from getting sick. And in her defense, she rarely got sick.

I remember family members telling her that she smelled quite bad, and I thought they were being mean, but in hindsight, it needed to be done. She smelled quite bad! Eventually, she started to take garlic pills in hopes that she wouldn’t smell so bad. And to my knowledge, it worked. She stopped smelling like garlic.

This is one of the things that I took away from living with my Mennonite foster mother. Garlic helps prevent you from getting sick. I also believe that garlic helps you to get over a cold sooner if you end up getting sick. When I started to feel that I was getting sick, I would make a soup that would consist of whatever vegetables I had in the fridge, farmer sausage and a lot of garlic. I used to add far too much garlic. I thought it was delicious, and everyone that tried it thought it was delicious as well. But the problem with it was that you would be sweating out garlic for days! I remember the last time that I used this insane amount of garlic, was when I was living in a small Mennonite town called La Crete in Alberta. I started getting a cold, so I made a massive pot of my special garlic soup and I put a lot of garlic into it. I was also working at a hog barn at the time. And anyone that has worked in a hog barn before knows, that it is a very strong smell. (Almost overwhelming for someone who has never been in one before.) And no matter how much you shower, you always kind of smell like the barn. And because it was a physical labor job, I would sweat quite a bit. The day after I had eaten my garlic soup, I was told by co-workers that the only smell in the barn at that time, was garlic. One of my co-workers was also my foster sister (who I was living with at the time) and she banned me from putting so much garlic into my soup. So now I only put 2 bulbs of garlic in a pot of soup.

Now when someone in our household starts to get sick, I make Garlic soup.

I start by peeling and cutting up 3 medium onions and frying(sweating) them in a large pot with butter or oil and added salt and pepper on medium heat. while the onions a sweating down i chop up 3 medium carrots and add them to the pot, followed by chopping up 3 sticks of celery and adding them to the pot. This acts as the base of your soup and gives it that great vegetable soup flavour.

After its been sweating in the pot for about ten minutes, add about 20 cups of water, turn element to high and bring to a boil. while soup is coming to a boil, chop up garlic and add it to the pot. I add two bay leaves and crushed red pepper. Turn heat down to a soft boil/simmer.

Chop up your favourite link of Farmers Sausage(I add more than one link so no one complains when i fill my bowl up with just sausage) and add it to soup. Then wash and chop up six to eight potatoes(We rarely peel potatoes, you can if you want.) then add to pot after sausage is cooked and broth is rendered down enough for your desired taste. You will want to add salt and pepper to taste at this point. I also add chopped up bell peppers at this point if i have them.

This soup lasts a couple of days in seal container the fridge. I also freeze it in sandwich sized good quality zip lock bags and it can last up to a couple of months. this way if only one person wants a small bowl of soup they can take it out of the freezer, reheat it and enjoy.