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Onions

Okay, no more spiders. Onions!

Yet another sign Fall is upon us — the onions were ready for harvest. Uncle B planted me a whole bed of them this year, and there they are.

Have I ever told y’all I have a kind of a special family relationship with onions? I was weaned on one. For reals. Instead of a binky, I got to suck on a green onion.

My grandmother was so fond of onions, she carried on eating them even after she developed some nasty stomach problems. She’d eat onions, then she’d double over in pain. But she persisted.

My mother had a bowl of onions as the centerpiece on the dining room table. At Christmas, we got onions in our stockings (among other things — the onions were filler. She collected them from us to make Christmas lunch).

There is no finer fragrance than onions frying in bacon grease. Ah, but the ladies of the Stoat fambly are serious alliumophiles.

Comments


Comment from Tim
Time: August 9, 2012, 10:50 pm

“alliumophiles”

It’s always good to add new words to your vocabulary.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 9, 2012, 10:54 pm

I sorta made that one up, but it works.


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: August 9, 2012, 11:02 pm

My mother was an alliumphile as well–she would have used them in a dessert, could she have thought of a way to make it work. . .


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: August 9, 2012, 11:53 pm

¡Лук!


Comment from Pupster
Time: August 9, 2012, 11:54 pm

I thought you might enjoy this, m`weasel:

http://imgur.com/gallery/j22sJ


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: August 10, 2012, 12:05 am

My wife & I make ceviché a few times a year, & it’s usually about 40-50% onion. Similarly, we’ve been making a black bean & mango salsa, & each time we increase the amount of onion, & haven’t hit a wall yet.

For dessert, I would consider small pieces of onion dipped in chinese black bean sauce, or perhaps sriracha or korean red pepper paste.


Comment from AliceH
Time: August 10, 2012, 1:59 am

How do you store onions so they don’t get moldy, mushy, or shriveled? Ditto potatoes, if you happen to know.

Obviously cool/dark place, but in what? I researched last year for my potato crop and learned to definitely store them plastic and definitely not plastic but metal except never metal cardboard is fine… you get the idea. I went with cardboard and had to throw most of them out after about a month.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: August 10, 2012, 2:30 am

What about the little Spiders that like to hide in the onions, waiting for a feast of unsuspecting Fingertips? 😉


Comment from Deborah
Time: August 10, 2012, 3:27 am

I love onions frying in bacon grease. Well, anything frying in bacon grease is fine with me—onion and potatoes for example. My mother would make biscuits, then slap them around in melted bacon grease before baking. Sigh. Sometimes for supper, I make a pan of corn bread, fry potatoes and onions, and stir up some cream gravy. I can’t bear to think about the fat grams and calories, and I don’t do it very often, but Oh! how it makes Husband happy.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: August 10, 2012, 5:23 am

Onion soup! Yum!

Now I want some right now!


Comment from EZnSF
Time: August 10, 2012, 6:00 am

Onions and garlic? Phzt.

I grew enough kale this summer to float a Norwegian Cruise Ship with no basalt. (I’m so tired of kale and damn jealous).

“All political gardens and chickens are local” Tip O’Neill


Comment from Mike C.
Time: August 10, 2012, 7:55 am

75 % of all main dish recipes used in this house start with “First, saute the onions.” The latest one is for what is called (and tastes like) onion soup sandwiches. Pretty good.

I made tomatillo salsa the other day, and of course it has an onion in it, but not a lot proportionately.


Comment from JC
Time: August 10, 2012, 8:39 am

Plastic milk crates, with layers of cardboard, have worked for me.


Comment from Oh Hell
Time: August 10, 2012, 11:50 am

We glean onions from the local farmers fields and just store them in a 5 gallon bucket. Go thru them frequently, and take out any that look funky. We dice a lot of them and put them in the freezer for immediate use in soups, stews, etc. AND OF COURSE – FRIED IN BACON GREASE!!!!


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 10, 2012, 12:04 pm

Alice – storing onions is pretty easy but you have to start by making sure none of them have ‘bolted’ – flowered – and are dry and firm. The traditional way is to knot them together with rafia or twine around the necks and just hang them in a cool kitchen. They don’t need dark, but they do need air around them.

Potatoes aren’t so easy, I find. I used to keep them in the fridge but apparently (I’m not 100% convinced) that makes them develop sugars which can be ‘bad for you’. Yeah.

What I do these days is store the good ones with no blemishes in a paper sack. The main thing is to keep them dark and cool.

Not a very good crop of onions this year, sadly. Rather than growing from seed as I usually do, I experimented with ‘sets’ which are baby onions. A lot of growers say you get better results. I didn’t and will go back to traditional methods next year!

Oh, and eat them?? Not in a thousand years. They’re just stoatfood 😉


Comment from AliceH
Time: August 10, 2012, 1:29 pm

Thanks, JC and UB.


Comment from Deborah
Time: August 10, 2012, 3:30 pm

Do badgers prefer leeks?

Alice—my mother-in-law stores home-grown potatoes in open shallow boxes (mostly beer or soda pop flats) and stacks them at cross angles on top of each other to let the air circulate. She tries to keep a finger-width between the taters and always turns all of them over when she makes her choices. She has a basement, so that helps keep them dark and cool, but I’ve seen her throw a burlap bag over the boxes stacked on the back porch.


Comment from AliceH
Time: August 10, 2012, 3:43 pm

Off topic: Police Blotter: Banjo attack!

excerpt:

They quickly located the suspect, primarily by looking for a guy on foot with a dog and a banjo. “When asked if he wished to talk about what happened,” says the report, “he said not without a lawyer as ‘I’ve been through this before.'” Wise choice, O traveling minstrel.


Comment from Deborah
Time: August 10, 2012, 3:43 pm

Stoaty! It’s Bark Obama—The Lyin’ Dog. You may have seen this but I just had to send it along in case you had not.

http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/2012/08/friday-foto-funnies.html


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: August 10, 2012, 8:40 pm

Onion spiders gay marrying chicken sandwiches. With cancer rays.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: August 10, 2012, 9:34 pm

Ever watch a TV cook tell you about cooking down onions? Caramelize, cook them til they transparent… they lie, outrageously, about how long it will take. I don’t mean they cut to a pan with the onions cooked, they’ll say “takes about ten minutes” when it takes like a half hour or more. Cook books lie too, big time.


Comment from AliceH
Time: August 10, 2012, 9:47 pm

I’ve seen that comment several places recently, Chris. I don’t know what you or the host of others who dispute this are doing but it actually does only take me 10″. Two possibilities: 1 – my starting point is a very hot pan with very hot oil (bacon grease or something) and 2- I’ll add a bit of sugar if I’m not using one of the sweeter type of onion.


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: August 10, 2012, 10:02 pm

Hm. Having read Christopher Taylor’s comment I was going to say “True, dat,” but, well, hm, given AliceH’s; maybe I’m just not brave enough to get the pan truly hot enough, eh?


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: August 10, 2012, 10:19 pm

For me, the favored dish has always been Yellow Squash and Onion. Start by cooking a largish ration of Bacon till crispy, then remove to cool. Cut up the squash and onion into cubes. Remove most of the grease to a cup, leaving a good coating on the pan. Add the squash and onion and cook till slightly caramelized. Crush the bacon into bits and add to the pan, adding bacon grease as needed to aid cooking. Finish with a large handful of mild Cheddar cheese in the pan, removing to a serving dish as soon as the cheese is melted and well mixed.


Comment from AliceH
Time: August 10, 2012, 11:39 pm

Scubafreak – that sounds deliciously simple. If I can get my lazy self to the store this weekend, I’ll be tucking a few yellow squash in the basket for sure.

I’m so glad to have finally discovered how tasty so many squash things are when properly prepared – for decades, I had only encountered the cooked-into-mush variety.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: August 11, 2012, 2:34 pm

Sure takes me longer than ten minutes to get the cooked down.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: August 12, 2012, 3:33 pm

How long does it take you to get the pan hot “enough” by the way? Because that’s part of the cooking time…


Comment from Redd
Time: August 12, 2012, 3:50 pm

Here’s my favorite: http://static.thepeoplescube.com/images/Dog_In_Every_Pot.jpg

H/T AoShq who ripped it off from “the Cube.”

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