Thursday, September 14, 2006
The Onion Saga Part 2: The Root Strikes Back
| Yesterday I began the tale of the delicious, yet dangerous root veggie called the Onion. I declared my love of the Onion and, through the crafty combination of Mythbusters, Alton Brown, Steve Irwin, and my impending cruise, I explained a useful (though slightly absurd) method for chopping onions without the tears. As a side note, I have not yet tried to chop onions at a baseball game. Tom Hanks assures us in A League of Their Own that "there's no crying in baseball!" I am unsure if this is an absolute fact, but has Tom Hanks ever been wrong? But I digress. I feel it is unfair of me to give the better options for onion chopping without addressing the bad options. Everything on this post from this point forward should be considered a warning. Use my misfortune for your own education. A year ago, after I grew weary of constant onion chopping, I decided to invest in a mandolin.  I bought my mandolin for $5 at the Dollar Store. Yes you read that right. It was $5 at the Dollar Store. I suppose there's a "truth in advertising" lawsuit in there somewhere, but I'm no lawyer. And if you are thinking "Isn't $5 a bit cheap for a multi purpose kitchen tool?" then you're thinking too far ahead. Please try and stay with the rest of the children and don't wander off! Last year, while making my Krystal Stuffing, I needed to chop some veggies. You do not need to chop any onions, as Krystal has already chopped them for you and put them on the Krystals. (You are now starting to see the beauty of my stuffing recipe, eh?) I did however need to dice some celery. Yes I have now given you one of the secret stuffing ingredients. Settle down, now! Since dicing celery is no fun, I decided to put my nifty $5 mandolin to work. A mandolin had sharp cutting blades and a "slicing guard" that you use to move the food back and forth over the blade to make nice even cuts.  This is my $5 Dollar Store mandolin. Apparently, the boxes for more expensive mandolins include a warning about never using it without the guard. Boxes for $5 mandolins do not have this warning. This is a very subtle but very important point. I now firmly believe that this warning should completely cover the box in 6" tall letters. Since the celery would have been too awkward to use the guard while dicing, I went "freestyle." While freestylin' might be good for rappers, it's not such a good idea for BMX bike racing, or cooking. Cerebrus quickly devoured celery, then a large portion of my index finger. Something like this:  After realizing what had happened, I quickly ran through all of the bad words and phrases in my vocabulary (known amongst my friends and I as hockey words: things hockey players say when bad things happen). I then realized the remainder of my finger was missing. Luckily, I was not dicing directly into the stuffing bowl otherwise I would have had to toss out the entire bowl of stuffing. Since it was Thanksgiving, I could not have gotten more Krystals, because (as we all know) they're closed on Thursday. Realizing I needed first aid for my mildly mangled finger, I had to decide on which version of first aid to use:
I know you're at a complete loss over the super glue first aid approach so let me explain. One of the earliest uses for Super Glue was as a sort of band aid. This is fact and you can look it up. I had heard this fact many years ago. Then while working my first job in the seafood dept. of Bruno's grocery store in Conyers, I sliced off a portion of my finger while I was cutting salmon fillets. (Yes I can cut salmon. Steaks, Fillets, whatever ya like!) I hadn't completely removed the portion of my finger but it was irritating, like the worst papercut you ever had. Remembering the Super Glue story, I decided to put it to the test. A little bit here and there and TADA! It worked great! The best part was that I didn't have to wait for it to work. As we all know, Super Glue "bonds instantly to skin." (Hey thats another one of those tiny print warning things!) Returning to this past Thanksgiving, after I superglued my mangled finger back together, I was forced to discard the diced celery since I was unable to locate the recently jettisoned portion of my finger, and could only assume it was in the celery. I then returned to fixing my stuffing. (One handed.) Nothing was going to deter me from Krystal Stuffing with my turkey! I assure you, the "Krystal lover" title is well earned. My stuffing was wonderful. My finger hurt like crazy. And I now keep Cerebrus chained in one of the top cabinets in the kitchen only letting him out on rare occasions. Now just how exactly does this tie in with yesterday's adventures in onion chopping? Well here it is: yesterday I was discussing chopping onions by using a knife. The problem with cerebrus, and all mandolins, is they chop the onions amazingly fast however the blades aren't as sharp as a real knife so they tend to release more of that bad oil. So we get MORE oil and MORE quickly. In other words, keep a box of Kleenex handy. It's going to be brutal! So what have we learned today?
Please don't try to Super Glue Band Aid trick! Apparently, Super Glue is sort of poisonous on skin. Liquid Bandage and other similar products work on the same principle, but are actually intended for skin contact!  |
Labels: Conyers, Onions, Recipe
