Have I ever mentioned my love/hate affair with onions? Nearly everything I cook contains this allium family member. that is the LOVE part. The HATE part is the dismembering of the plant itself.
Most onions have an adverse effect on my tear ducts. I have tried freezing them, cutting under running water, and most remedies written or spread by word of mouth. Red , white, yellow onions, it just doesn't matter. The result is always the same, tears.
There is also the problem of uniformity of cut. I can slice and dice but my dice seems to leave something to be desired. The lack of uniformity in the dice leads to lack of uniformity in the cooking.
I have watched Bobby flay and Alton Brown whiz around the kitchen, knife in hand, dispatching the unsuspecting lily cousin with wild abandon. This leads me to have feelings of inferiority and lack of self esteem!
Voila! A solution appears on an infomercial late one night. Some genius has invented an onion chopper that has safeguards built in for chubby idiot fingers such as mine and chops onions like butter.
The demonstrator simply takes the ends off the onion, removes the outside peel, and slices the bulb in half. He then takes the marvelous machine, lifts the lid, places the half onion on the sharp grid and swiftly lowers the lid.
Amazing! With one downward stroke of his hand on the lid, the onion renders iteself into perfectly square particles inside the compartment provided to avoid the mess of diced vegetable going everywhere. Brilliant! I was thrilled but not mesmerized. There had to be a catch.
I flirted with the idea of effortless division of the hapless onion for days.
Days turned into weeks. Still I was not budged. I spent more hours watching tv chefs disarticulate vegetables with a flick of the wrist. My own efforts, however, were less fruitful.
On my many weekly pilgrimages to Wal Mart I was teased by this onion splitting gadget sitting on the kitchenware shelves. Still, I tried to be objective about purchasing something that would probably be a unitasker and would also need a home in my already crowded cabinets. obviously when VO-Tech built this house they did not remember to add the closets and cabinets that human beings need to store their stuff!
Finally, one sultry summer day my mind was made up. I would have to buy the onion splitting gizmo. This was precipitated of course, by the Food TVchannel. I watched Semi-Homemade featuring Sandra Lee.
Now, I love Sandra Lee dearly. This semi homemade idea is right up my alley. The less I have to concoct, the better I like it. I seem to recall spending and inordinate amount of time making a genuine Tuna Casserole, including having my friend e-mail me a recipe. I presented the homemade wonder to the spouse, only to be greeted with "GREAT! I like TUNA HELPER." What happened after that is another story for another time.
Let me return to Sandra Lee. She uses this particular gadget all the time when dicing onions. Just as the demo guy on tv did slip the peeled onion in, lower the lid and the diced onions fall squarely into the container below. If Sandra can do it, so can Patricia.
Of course when I returned to Wal Mart they were all gone. Two stores later I was convinced that there was a conspiracy. My hesitation had caused them all to be taken. Turning to good old Amazon.com, I found that there were plenty to be had. In true Amazon fashion, the gadget came Priority mail, dressed in bubble wrap and ready for action.
So was I! Not bubble wrapped, just ready for action. The onion came
out. It was peeled, and halved and placed in the onion chopper. I was delighted that my chopper was the same color as Sandra Lee's. Here was something else we had in common.
When all was set, I lowered the cover, expecting the onion to drop into the container. Everything was fine until the cover hit the onion. There was a sudden stop in the process. I tried again with another half onion. the same impediment occurred. Several onions later I reached a dismal conclusion.
I simply am not strong enough to shove the vegetable through the grate!
Sandra Lee is not Charles Atlas, nor Hulk Hogan. Still, she manages to make it look as if a child can do it.
The onion chopper is currently sitting in seclusion, back in the box, on the counter. Tomorrow is another day. Perhaps the problem is as simple as the trajectory. My counter may be too high. I will try the kitchen table as a base of operation and try again.
The worst case scenario will be to have the spouse dice the onions. At 6'4" the trajectory should be not only correct for diced onions, the thrust should probably send them into another dimension entirely.
