Kitchenside Chronicles: Veggie Edition

I hate onions almost as much as I hate puppy mills and people who don’t recycle. This long-standing aversion has been characterized as ‘shameful’ on at least two occasions but I can’t seem to shake the distain for the pungent, greasy-textured, bulb-shaped vegetable.

Unfortunately, this objection to onions is matched, if not exceeded by a genuine disgust for raw meat. Now I wouldn’t call myself a vegetarian – if you make me a good steak* and I haven’t seen the raw meat, I’ll happily douse the thing in A-1 and gobble away, blissfully forgetting about its origins. But when it comes to cooking meat in my own kitchen, I can’t quite bring myself to even purchase (much less cook with) raw meat.

These two food aversions combine to make cooking for oneself a bit difficult since 99.9% of non-meat recipes contain onions.

Given that I need to eat, I realized I had to tackle at least one of these aversions, head on. Since the meat issue would likely involve some serious psychological therapy so I took on the onion problem first.

My solution: secret onions. One trip to Target and $49.99 later, I had my means for making secret onions in the form of a low-tech food processor**.

Two days after my food processor test run, I made falafel, combining the onions with the rest of the deliciously ethnic fresh ingredients. Most amazing about this falafel was the fact that I ate it and did not worry about the prospect of an onion touching my tongue (also, the objective assessment of my falafel was a relatively emphatic ‘Excellent’).

Since then, pulverized onions (now codenamed ‘special sauce’), have made my cooking an event not to be missed. Grilling season now features homemade black bean burgers (now fully seasoned to taste). Chili no longer tastes as though it is missing a key ingredient.

I think I will always order my Veggie Lovers pizza sans onions, but if you find a way to sneak them in, I will probably never know…

*Well done, please.

**FML for buying the useless kitchen appliance that received less than two stars.