Welcome to my world and beyond...

A collection of snippets of the books I write and, occasionally, my life and the things that inspire my writing...

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

A to Z "O"

O...  Onions came to mind when I thought of the letter O with respect to growing up on a farm. Onions, for anyone who has never grown them, is a root crop in the lily family. I'm a fan of onions. Growing up on a farm with a tight budget, there was ample opportunity to meet different foods--and to eat what was fixed for supper. It was a long time until breakfast--should I have chosen otherwise. I digress.

Back to the onions. They are pretty easy to grow, too. Root crops, in general, are an easy group to grow. We grew a ton of root crops when I was a kid. Turnips--which I still like to eat.  It was pretty common for us to have mashed potatoes/turnips in about a 50/50 blend. Probably healthier too than just plain potatoes.

Potatoes... now that brings to mind picking potatoes. Of course, when I say "picking", it's not like you can pick a potato off of a plant like you pick a pepper or a tomato (which are, oddly enough, in the same plant family--the nightshades).  Since potatoes are tubers that form along the root system of the plant, the roots must be dug up from the ground before we can pick potatoes.

Dad had a potato digger. He pulled it behind the Farmall H and it dug into the ground much like a plow does.  Then we had to carry buckets into the field and loosen the clods of dirt to knock the potatoes loose. I've read it compared to searching for treasure from the earth. Hmm...maybe now I'd say that, when I grow a couple of Yukon Gold potato plants, and a few blue potato plants. But when I was a kid and stood looking at a two acre field of potatoes being turned over, it was anything but treasure. It was work.

I suppose I was grumpy--I must have been all of 5 or 6 years old--the memory is quite hazy. My grumpiness, I suppose, made it quite easy for my older brother Pete to torment me to the point that I picked up a potato and threw it at him with a wind up that would've made Cy Young envious. And I suppose it was just as easy for Pete to duck and watch the potato sail right past him and wallop my aunt Mary in the head just as she lifted her face to yell at us for bickering.

I've digressed once again. This is the "O" post.

What I wanted to share today is the reason we cry when we peel and slice and chop onions.

Onions have sulfur compounds in them. When they are sliced, those compounds mix with other compounds and become airborne. That meets the water that lubricates our eyes and forms a very mild but highly irritating sulfuric acid.  Then our eyes begin to tear, trying to wash away the irritant.

Whew, that was a two dollar story just to give you a ten cent explanation. ;-)

Happy O day. :-)

14 comments:

  1. I never knew exactly why we cried chopping onions. Thanks for sharing!

    And PS- I would eat potatoes every meal if I could- yum!

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    1. ACS, you are welcome. :-)

      Oh, another potato lover. I love them mashed, fried, parsley and butter...you get the idea. :-)

      Thanks for visiting. :-)

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  2. I have tearful eyes right now from cutting onions for tea tonight, but we go through such discomfort for a very tasty result at the end. I have to add that I bet that field of potatoes looked like work and not searching for treasure fun, just a couple of lines of potato picking on our allotment can be tedious and back aching.

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    1. Oh, what did you make that was so delicious? :-) I hope you had a good tea. :-) Thanks for visiting, DayDreamer. :-)

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  3. I love growing root veggies, because, like you said, they are easy; so it feels like I'm this amazing gardener.

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    1. lolol--I like that, Melanie. Amazing gardener. Too funny! :-) Thanks for visiting. :-)

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  4. You have some arm! :)

    Even though they make me cry, I still like cooking with onions. ☺

    Have a great day.

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    1. Haha! What I really have is an imagination! :-) Thanks for visiting, Dana!

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  5. Poor Auntie...I be she learned to keep her down. Onions are a favorite thing to grow...just because they are easy and can go in the ground early.

    Great post for Letter 'O'

    My Letter 'O'...Obsession Over Odds and Ends
    Sue CollectInTexasGal
    AtoZ LoneStar Quilting Bee

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    1. Yeppers, Sue! And the green onions are so good. Great if you lack patience. :-)

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  6. Fried potatoes and onions..... the way Mom made them ....and I have never mastered the art of raw fries. I expect there was bacon grease involved since my Dad was Texan! :) Some soft and some golden brown with the right crisp on them salted and peppered. Sometimes with ketchup and sometimes drizzled with Brer Rabbit molasses. Again, a Texan "thang" or perhaps an old layover from the Depression. There was the occasional burnt black onion which we children wound NOT touch, the acrid smell in the kitchen was quite enough. So it seems potatoes and onions do make for good meandering memories.
    That leads to my more sweet memories. Our neighbor's 80 acre potato farm surrounded our little pre-fab house from the 60's on two sides. Those fields were a wonderland for a little neighbor girl, and we were taught when the fields were safe to play in. One of my earliest memories of that childhood home is seeing a group of foreign looking women in long skirts and babushka scarves bent over hand digging potatoes. Later that day, our elderly farmer neighbor said we childen may glean the fields for overlooked treasures. What an exciting day that was. After a few years, Mr. Bartley had a machine to do the harvesting.
    It was here that I first savored the smell of freshly plowed fields, and felt the stinging cold of those plowed rows of dirt. The spring weather was warm and we thought we'd go barefoot only to learn the soil turned from underneath was still very cold.... too cold until later in the day when the sun dried the soil and made it a lighter color. The disc would come and break down the chunky rows and smooth them for planting. I can still see and smell and feel all this and it has been close to fifty years since girlhood days. Every child needs a place to roam without fear to explore and dream; to feel the winds and warmth of summer days. Ahhhh. I smile to think that every home I lived except one, has been next door to farms or in close proximity. :)))))) Your country friend from Saxonburg/Penn Twp. -KMc

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    1. Ahem... when are you going to put pen to paper, young lady?? You can write! :-)

      Your comment is beautiful, KMc. Thanks for visiting and reading. :-)

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  7. What a great post about onions!! I have to eat them in something at least 3 times a week. Loved this.

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  8. Hi, Teresa,
    It was quite recently that I had my first experience watching people did potatoes out of the earth.

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