Onion Obsession

I’ve been listening to this weight loss self-hypnosis CD that I ordered online. I’m incredibly embarrassed about this in real life but writing is not quite real life, so I don’t mind talking about it here. In real life humiliation is just humiliation. In writing it’s material.

The soothing voice on the CD says I will be amazed to discover that after eating less than half my meal, I am completely satisfied. It says that every time I eat, before I eat, I will ask myself, is this what a healthy person eats to lose weight? And it says to picture a mirror that says: MY FUTURE IN CONTROL, and then see in the mirror an image of myself at my ideal weight, looking happy and fulfilled. And through it all my mind keeps wandering away to things like: butter--don’t forget to buy--sweet or salted?--both--maybe make bread--whole wheat--try with quinoa--raisins too?

The CD says hypnosis can’t make you do anything that you don’t really want to do. And so I’ve concluded that I don’t really want to stop thinking about food all the time. And besides, what else is there?

Which brings me to the Super Bowl. We had hotdog magic, caramelized onion dip, Fritos (the big ones) and potato chips (the wavy ones). Also other assorted dips. The hotdog magic recipe was from one of my grandma’s handwritten recipe cards, a family heirloom in faded pencil. So we buy the hotdogs and cheese and crescent rolls in a tube, and there on the Pillsbury crescent roll package is the same exact recipe. Not much to it: wrap hotdogs and cheese in a crescent roll and bake. The highlight is really when you peal the paper off the crescent roll package and it goes, POP! and the dough starts to ooze out. Enzo liked that part. Of course he wanted to do it again and again, and it’s sort of a one-off thing. He got over the disappointment by beating on his allotted crescent roll dough with some metal tongs. He’s been into tongs lately.

But the true star of the Super bowl is the dip. Enzo and I made the caramelized onions the day before. Slicing five pounds of onions with a sharp knife is not an ideal kitchen chore for a two-year-old, so I prepped them in advance by pealing off the dry outer layers and them cutting into quarters, or even smaller. Then I adjusted my swim goggles to fit Enzo, and let him run the food processor while I fed the onions through that ridiculous little feed tube.

The goggles didn’t work that well, and he and I both started to cry. I explained how onions hurt your eyes, but it would go away, and for the rest of the day he kept rubbing his eyes and saying, “Onion eyes! Onion eyes!” and looking sad and dramatic.

But the onions turned out great: about ten yellow onions, a cube of butter, a sprinkle of brown sugar, salt of course. Cook on low in the slow cooker for about seven hours. Stir it a few times. Oh, and no lid because you have to let all the onion juice cook off. For the first five hours it perfumes the whole house with raw onion, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be anything but raw onion slush. (Come to think of it, maybe Enzo really did have onion eyes all day, and it wasn’t just drama.) But gradually the onions get golden and soft and syrupy.

And here’s the genius part. When the slow cooker is done with whatever time you’ve set it for, it automatically switches to the warm setting. So I accidentally left the onions on warm overnight, and they got darker and sweeter and more fabulous. I think I must have cooked them almost 24 hours total, using the warm setting for most of it, and by the end they were dark chunky brown sludge, like industrial waste, only delicious. We may all die of botulism, but god they were great. And easy. The dip part is—mix caramelized onions with equal parts sour cream and cream cheese.

We had a lot of onions left over, so I keep thinking of more things to eat with caramelized onions. Caramelized onions and hotdogs (obvious but fabulous); caramelized onions, black beans and scrambled eggs; peanut butter and caramelized onion sandwich; and what about risotto?

Also, variations on the onions themselves. Next time I’m going to add some nice hot peppers or maybe fresh ginger to the onions just to add a little kick to that sweetness. Any why not try frozen pearl onions? It would be so easy, and maybe even pretty.

Is this how teenage boys are with sex, thinking about it all the time with endless interest and variation? And what about caramelized onion upside down cake? Hmmmm... .