Garlic Is Life

by Chester Aaron and Ten Speed

Book Overview

The California garlic farmer and supplier describes how he become increasing involved in the gourmet garlic business, and offers recipes featuring the herb. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898158060
• ISBN13: 9780898158069
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

More than just garlic

Take a good helping of witty memoir, add a handful of very useful gardening/farming information, & a huge heap of garlic (and recipes) and you have a marvelous book. Highly recommended.

How to become a garlic farmer

After reading Chester Aaron's Symptoms of Terminal Passion I needed to read a little more. Aaron's Memoir is a little premature, because his is still living and growing garlic more than 10 years later, using the garlic theme in all he writes. It was fascinating seeing the real-life background for the stories I had read. I'm also looking harder for different kinds of garlics, and even tempted to try to plant a clove or two in one of the pots on our patio. Strangely, I was reading this at the same time I read Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by Norwegian writer, Per Petterson. It was amazing how the two books complemented each other! Both are written in the first person in beautiful, engaging prose. (Horses is so well translated that you don't notice that it was written in another language, except for the occasional Norwegian place names.) Both utilize many flashbacks to childhood, Petterson's Trond mostly to 1948 in alternate chapters, Chester to the 30's in Pennsylvania. Both have moved to the country to start over after losing their wives: Chester after a devastating divorce, Trond after a horrendous car accident. Both recall strong relations to difficult fathers, who continue to influence the way they try to create new lives as 70-something "old men." (Their mothers are lurking in the background.) Both fathers are still lurking to show how to do practical things on their farms. For both books the natural settings (fields, woods and ocean for Chester, forest, meadows and river for Trond) and the weather (wind, rain, and yes, also the sun) provide more than just the setting. Trond's dog Lyra and Chester's cat Sadie are their constant companions, while sheep, horses, gophers and other creatures also play important roles. Crops play important roles (garlic, of course, and fruit trees for Chester, trees for Trond.) Neighbors and other humans provide insight and sometimes help, but occasionally are more of an irritant to their daily lives alone on their farms - although Garlic ends with a wedding! But only Garlic provides you with numerous recipes for strange garlics, including 2 desserts!

Much more than advertised

Chester Aaron has something for everyone. His love of Garlic is only matched by his love of a richly varied life. The receipes are are a little simplistic and really a sidebar to the real story which is Aaron himself. I am buying several copies to Give to friends. This book is not a loaner

Great book

I have had the pleasure of interviewing Chester on my gardening show on a couple of occassions and found him charming, enlightening and certainly passionate about his garlic. I was thouroughly pleased when I found the book to be an extension of his interviews. This man at 80 something is more full of life than most twenty year olds and he exudes this energy and love of life into print in a way that makes you feel that you are in the field talking with him rather than reading a book. The recipies were devine. An absolute must for the Garlic aficionado.

The title says it all.

This is an autobiographical slice of Chester Aaron's life as he waas intoduced to garlic growing and became a garlic devotee. Aaron and his cat take the reader into the world of garlic,its many varities, and how to best grow these bulbs of life. At the end of the book are thirty recipes for tasty garlic dishes. It is a very readable primer on garlic growing.