27 June 2022

According to the "National day" site, today is Onion Day.  In June 2022, the National Onion Association established National Onion Day to commemorate the organization’s 53rd anniversary. They officially incorporated on June 27, 1913, in Ohio, and represent almost 500 onion farmers, shippers, packers, and allied members across the U.S.

I learned to love onions from my father, who, as he was growing up, ate them the way normal people would eat an apple.  He would walk down the street munching on an onion and his teacher(s) had to make him take his onions out of the classroom.  (This may explain why he didn't have any girlfriends in high school!)

He made the very best potato salad I've ever had, and one of the things which made it great was the amount of onion in it.  Which is why I can never try to recreate his potato salad -- because Walt doesn't like onions.

Walt and I had problems with onions over the years.  I tried mincing them, grinding them, and leaving them in big pieces so they were easier to find because I didn't know how to cook without onions.  He let me cook with onions, but always spent time picking the onions out (you should see his plate when I ground onions, with a pile of onion shreds on his plate before he started eating!)

He never made me stop using onions.  He just found  a way to remove them from the dishes I used them in and we were both satisfied.  His life has been much better since Ned and Marta moved in.  Ned, like me, is an onion fan, but Marta won't eat food made with onions (except the fried onions that go on green bean salad at Christmas dinner).  It's not the flavor she minds, but she hates the texture.  So we never cook with onions.  At all.

I watch cooking shows a lot, especially on Saturday morning, and it's difficult to find any main dish recipe that doesn't start with browning onions and garlic.  Food doesn't taste right without onions in it.

We rely on the onion to improve the flavor of our savory meals, whether we use a sweet, white, red, or ever-popular yellow onion. They complement meats and salads, making the versatile onion a culinary powerhouse. It’s the needed seasoning alongside our salt and pepper, whether added to eggs or pickled. While the onion is low in calories, it is also high in vitamin C and antioxidants, and can increase your dietary fiber and vitamin B6 intake. Unlike many other low-calorie ingredients, onions provide a high nutritional content without compromising flavor. And it makes no difference what you do to it; pickled or raw, caramelized, sauteed, or pureed — the onion adds a lot of flavor to a dish. With so many types to choose from, onions present numerous opportunities to reap the benefits.

Ned will sometimes chop up onions for the two of us to share on dishes that call for raw onions (like burritos) but if I try to sneak some onion in another cooked dish, Marta just doesn't eat it.

Oddly enough, she does like fried onion rings, a treat we share.  Onion rings are my favorite hamburger side dish at fast food places, much more than French fries.  It's surprising, though, how many different ways people cook onion rings -- whether actual rings of onions, to dried minced onions somehow formed into a ring to be fried to various ways to fix onion rings in between those two extremes.  Obviously the actual rings are the best.  I've made them a few times, but can never get them as good as when you can buy at a fast food joint.

It's our anniversary and maybe I should cook myself some onion rings to celebrate, since Walt will be eating alone upstairs.