Onions not included

08/25/2021

Onions Not included.

After being a food connoisseur for the last 44 years (my mom tells me the stories of when I was a baby and she had just fed me, that I'd cry at my father eating his food and not giving it to me....should have known then that me and food, yeah, we'd be a couple) I have come to this one big conclusion: Onions are over rated.

As someone who hates onions to the point of literally getting sick when I eat one, or at the very least gagging upon realizing there's one in my mouth, I find that everywhere you go, onions are included. Really? How come? Have you ever stopped to read the ingredients on a jar of spaghetti sauce? I stand in the aisle at times reading the labels of 10 different sauces only to find one, yes just one, without onion listed in the ingredients. It is the only sauce I will buy, and that's Prego. Or how about stuffing? I used to love getting Market Basket brand stuffing because there were no onions included. Somewhere along the line someone decided that was in bad taste and added them in the ingredients. And now, I can only buy Pepperidge Farm stuffing because they are the only ones who don't add onions. May there be an onion hater on the board of directors at Pepperidge Farm. Here's a good rule of thumb folks. Don't add onions to everything. Why? Because if you like onions, you can simply add them to anything you want. You can have a hint of hash and onions, scrambled onions and eggs, tuna and onions whole, chopped, sautéed however the hell you want them. If they're already added, we either choose to not buy the item, or, as I used to do with my favorite soup at Bill and Bob's (Danny made the best ever Vegetable soup), we painstakingly remove them a spoonful at a time. And incidentally, Danny's soup was worth that effort, and so is Market Basket Chili. And for Heaven's sake, if we tell you to hold the onions, please hold the onions. That includes making sure the "lettuce" you're putting on my sandwich doesn't have remnants of the onions located next to the lettuce. Seems a piece or two always manages to find it's way into the lettuce which then finds its way into my sandwich. Come on people, a little bit of common sense goes a long way. Don't put the onions next to the lettuce they look too much alike. You are certainly going to know if a piece of onion fell in the carrots or the tomatoes. Can't really tell the difference though with lettuce. And I'll tell you, there is not much a whole lot worse than looking forward to enjoying that Jr. Whopper you just ordered, unwrapping it and taking a huge bite only to start gagging because there's a huge piece of onion in the mix. Luckily my nose can smell them a bun away. But if I'm too impulsively hungry, my stomach over rules my nose and I'm once again very sorry that my love of food overtakes my rational thinking.

Even my own brother betrays me when it comes to onions. He so horrifically proclaims "How can you be Italian and not like onions?" Easy I hate them. It's not like I don't like lasagna (But if it includes onions I do) or pasta. It's just onions. And why is that anyway that onions are synonymous with Italian cooking? Why must menu's read Pasta: Onions in lasagna sauce. Or burgerless onion balls. Again I ask, why do you have to include onions in everything when you cook? It's so much easier to order a side of onions and add to your meal then pick them out. When my mom makes tuna fish, she always finely chops up onions and tries to deny she has added them to the tuna. She will make me a sandwich and say, "There's no onion in there". I of course don't trust her after years of taking a bite of an onion piece and tell her I can smell them. She adamantly states "You can't even see them or taste them". Oh, but yes, I can. I bet if I put anchovies finely chopped in her tuna she'd know they were there.

Fortunately people in my life know me so well that they cook without onions, or even sweeter still, they make a batch with onions and a batch without. It's not that I don't like the flavor. Onion powder, fine. Garlic, fine. Any other spices, generally fine. Just don't give me the onions. Not if you still want me to like you anyway.

While I can't battle every chef and restaurant in Massachusetts (not even on the North Shore) I think someday I'll open my own deli or even a restaurant. I've already come up with the name of the place which may stop people from coming in. But for those like me and my sister Sheri, it will be an open invitation. I will call it

Onions Not Included

C Tinkham

1:30 p.m. 11/15/11

Chris Tinkham
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