GARLIC PHOBIA

I've been waiting to say this for a long long time. I don't like garlic in any form. I don't like it. I don't like to be near people who have been eating garlic in an elevator, or standing next to me in line. Remember Audrey Hepburn in "The Nun's Story?" She had to assist the dishy surgeon in Africa who reeked of garlic every day until she couldn't take it any more, and fainted. I haven't had it that bad but my heart sinks when I walk into a home as a dinner guest and a wave of garlic greets me at the door.

Now you don't get any support from anyone else in this phobia. Quite the contrary- friends tell you they can't get enough of it. One friend said she had a recipe for some kind of concoction with Forty (40) cloves of garlic, if you can imagine that! I have been served everything with garlic, eggs, delicate fish, butter, even once a fruit salad. This last was in a bank building rooftop restaurant in Phoenix. I don't think they really intended to garlic up the fruit salad, but their knives and cutting boards were just saturated with the stuff. It was years ago but I still haven't forgotten the incident. When is the last time you ever had a piece of virgin French bread with just butter and maybe a little cheese?

I think one of the reasons I can't tolerate garlic is because I come from a German town (Cincinnati) and garlic was not a staple in our house. I doubt if my mother ever saw a bulb of garlic, and it certainly was not big in Cincinnati"s German restaurants. Garlic was O.K. in the town's one Italian spot (Caproni's) and it was treat to go there - but that was where garlic belonged. Even then it was used with a certain amount of discretion, instead of total immersion as it is today. I have heard that the Queen of England does not like garlic, so perhaps it is not a staple of English cuisine. I wonder if Scandinavians like it - somehow I doubt it.

As for garlic supposedly being good for the blood pressure or whatever, I don't believe it. You probably smell so unpleasant that no one wants to get near enough to take your blood pressure.

There, I've said the unthinkable. Some very nice friends I know have the surname of Knoblauch. I think this means garlic. Please, Susan and Richard, think about changing your name!