April A to Z Challenge: O is for ...

    My bloggy friend, Kelly, and I seem to think a lot alike. Every day since the beginning of our April A-Z challenge I check out her site to see if we have chosen the same word. Today, for the first time, we were on "mind meld."

    O is for Onions.

     At lunch time today I came home to find all the living room windows open and a cold rain-blessed breeze blowing through the house. Computer Geek was amazed to find that despite all his machinations, I could still smell onion. He shouldn't be surprised. I can smell the dastardly things a block away. "But I aired out the house so you wouldn't smell it."  Doesn't matter. The stench seeps into walls and curtains, and hangs on like a pouched baby kangaroo.

     I didn't always hate onions. From birth to my introduction to solid foods, I was blissfully unaware. It wasn't until I became cognizant of my senses of smell and taste that I learned to despise them.

    My mother, a lover of all things oniony, used to try to convince me that the entree we were having for dinner on any particular night contained no onions at all. "I swear to you I did not put any onions in that goulash."  When I would take one bite and accuse, "There are onions in here!" she would defend her innocence by saying. "I didn't put any onions in there. They must have been in the canned sauce I used." Once she dared me to find an onion in the homemade bean soup she made  When I triumphantly showed her one on my spoon, she said, " I chopped them so fine I didn't think you would find them."  How is one supposed to grow up with trust?

    I was convinced that she added onions to my favorite foods, hoping that I would someday say, "Oh wow, Mom. I have been so wrong. Onions taste so good after all!" Never happened. I greedily cut into a pan of fresh-baked brownies one day, only to spit out a mouthful when I encountered an onion skin. She said, "I have no idea how that got in there." Oh, I know. The onion sprites put it in there, knowing exactly which square I would choose as my brownie. They are the same imps who caused me to spew a mouthful of iced tea into the sink when an onion skin adhered to my tongue. "Maybe it was just stuck to the inside of the glass you used," Mom said.

    Being an onion-hater can be a pain. At restaurants, I always have to ask if there are any onions in the food I'm ordering. Usually the waiters lie. I almost cried once when I went to an Italian restaurant chain and the salad came with huge, pungent, red onions all over the top. Couldn't eat it. Onion vapors had seeped in.  It's also annoying when you realize that the cook has cut the tomato with the same knife that he used to cut an onion. I hate it when I go to someone's house and they serve me a drink with ice cubes that have shared the same refrigerator space as an onion. Yes people, the fumes from the crisper drawer migrate to the confines of the freezer and taint the ice cubes. And what about onion-lovers who cut off a slab of butter with the same knife they used to cut an onion? Ruins my toast if I am the next unfortunate soul to use the butter.  Only a fellow onion hater knows of what I speak.

    Is it just the smell, or is it the taste? people will ask me. It's the whole onion experience--the smell, the crunch of it between my teeth, the burning eyes, the sore throat that follows.

    Don't get me started on garlic and chives. On the bright side, I never have onion breath.