Even as a little boy I was a champion of diversity. I didn't care if the onion was white, yellow or red. I liked them all. My favorite meal at grandma's house was her onion sandwich: thin slices of onion, two slices of bread and a generous layer of Duke's mayonnaise.
Fortunately for all of you, my tastes are a little more sophisticated now, though sophisticated and simple are not mutually exclusive when it comes to good recipes. Have you ever thought about combining savory caramelized onions, tangy blue cheese and sweet, juicy slices of apple? I hadn't either, until our friend (and former Martha Stewart Everyday Food editor Sandy Gluck) made the suggestion. The result was a delicious and decadent onion tart that will impress every single person at your table.
Yucky or yummy? Take your pick! According to a recent report, women's body order smells of onions (or grapefruit) and men's of cheese. Lemondrop explains that researchers had both men and women engage in the same exercises and had both groups sit in saunas. Afterwards, scientists took samples of men and women's perspiration.
Women's perspiration contains large amounts of a sulfurous compound that creates a scent similar to onion soup when mixed with armpit bacteria. Ah, and then there's men's perspiration! Think Stilton or a stinky Roquefort. Men's perspiration releases higher amounts of fatty acids. So, as Lemondrop remarks, this seems like an excellent opportunity for deodorant companies.
When purchasing deodorant at the pharmacy, men and women's antiperspirants are often separated, probably in the same way that colognes and perfumes are divided at a department store - masculine smells and feminine smells. It seems that now, scientists can work with deodorant companies to create more efficient gender targeted products.
Ever wonder if there was a way to prevent your eyes from stinging and tearing up when slicing an onion? It turns out that there are several tactics to holding back those tears.
I became aware of cottage cheese dill bread when I started working in my pastry kitchen. It's one of the breads that I have to make on a regular basis, as it's used for all kinds of canapes and finger sandwiches. I've never seen it in a retail bakery and so far as I can tell, it's not a very popular bread, but it should be.
Cottage cheese dill loaves are made with a variety of savory ingredients that make for a saliva-inducing aroma and taste. In addition to the cottage cheese and dill you've got onion and horseradish, and in some cases Parmesan cheese (I've seen it in recipes, but don't use it in my bread).
The dill loaves I make are used mainly for smoked salmon canapes and cucumber finger sandwiches, and I also make a cottage cheese dill dinner roll. They make the pastry kitchen smell absolutely wonderful. They can make your house smell just as good, and you'll be very pleased with what this bread can do for your sandwiches, not to mention toast! This recipe I found online looks good, but I'd add a tablespoon of horseradish if you have it. Also, there's a good version in Bernard Clayton's "New Complete Book of Breads". Check out the gallery below for some inspirational photos.
Can you imagine eating a whole, raw onion by itself, let alone polishing it off in a little over a minute?
J.R. Kuka achieved that feat in the onion eating contest that's part of the Pine Island Summer Fest. Mr. Kuka ate the eight ounce onion in a record 75 seconds, where the previous record had been 1 minute, 55 seconds. Reportedly, this year's winner was cool as a cucumber and smiling as he cut and consumed the onion. He also took his $100 prize and goody bag and left the festival before the local reporter could interview him.
Apparently, the Pine Island onions are known for being much stronger than other onions. I'm personally not a big fan of uncooked onions, so I can't really see myself doing this. For $100, I might enter the contest, but I wouldn't be able to eat it very fast. How would you do in this onion-eating contest?
Be it fish, garlic, or cabbage, dinner is delicious - until it's all gone, but its scent remains in the air, permeating the furniture and generally grossing you out.
Aside from sticking a fan in the window and setting it to 'exhaust,' Apartment Therapy has some great suggestions on how to get rid of those lingering odors:
Leave a dish of vinegar on the counter overnight, or leave it out while you're cooking (careful of boiling it, though, because then you'll replace the fish smell with vinegar, and that's not really any better)
Simmer a mixture of half-vinegar, half-water on the stove
Simmer a mixture of lemon and orange rinds on the stove for about half an hour. Throw some cloves in, too, if you have them
Before you cook fish, core and slice an apple into thin layers. Then submerge the apples and fry them in oil until they turn brown. Then, go ahead and cook your fish.
I'm typically too busy crying to stop and appreciate just how pretty an onion is. This amazing photo by The Barefoot Kitchen Witch makes the onion looks like a piece of crystal in a museum, the rings of a tree trunk, or a sky at sunset. Don't stop with this photo, though. To complete your onion appreciation class, be sure to view The Barefoot Kitchen Witch's other onion photos as well. Each is equally stunning and features different angles of this familiar food.
Next time I cut up an onion, I'm going to hold it under the light and take a closer look.
What does this onion look like to you? Have you stopped before to appreciate the onion's attractiveness?
Years ago I went out with a girl whose mother was named Lorraine. I'm not sure if she ever made quiche or not, but I probably wouldn't have eaten it. If you recall, real men don't eat quiche.
Today is National Quiche Lorraine Day. Here's a classic recipe from Betty Crocker, and here's one from the great food blog Slashfood. Hey wait a minute, that's us!
If your name happens to be Lorraine, leave a comment below. And if you happen to be a quiche, also leave a comment.
For most of yesterday, it was sort of chilly and overcast in Philly (it got sunny and warm in the late afternoon). The cool breeze that came through my window all morning made me thinking longingly of fall and want to put on a sweater. It also inspired me to make soup. However, since it is still summer, I wanted something that wasn't long-simmering or heavy. So I flipped to a soup that my mom made a lot when I was growing up, although back in those days, I always turned my nose up at it. These days, I can't get enough of it, especially when I had a weekend that was chock full off barbecue, desserts and beer.
There have been plenty of California blood oranges in the markets lately, so this is the second week in a row that I've made this very simple blood orange salad. The basic version that I make at home and usually see in restaurants includes blood oranges and thinly sliced red onion, garnished with cracked pepper and good olive oil. I added some torn Italian parsley and, this time, some thinly sliced hearts of palm. If you're unfamiliar with hearts of palm, the flavor is mild and fresh, a bit like an artichoke, and the texture is similar to barely cooked asparagus. As the name implies, these are the edible cores of the cabbage palm. You'll generally find them canned, among the other canned vegetables. As they're fairly mild, they work well with the acidity of the oranges and the richness of the olive oil. This is a great way to start a number of different menus, but I think it works particularly well as foil to richer dishes like stews or braised meats.
I was surfing around my friend Jade Walker's site today, and I didn't realize that she had a "Favorite Recipes" section, where she gave the recipe for something that she's been enjoying lately. Right now she has up Pop Pot Roast, which sounds like a damn good recipe for pot roast.
It's made with dried spaghetti sauce mix, which I think is an interesting twist. And it's made with pop! That's soda to some of the world (and "tonic" to those in the Boston area).
So what with Thanksgiving last week, and then throwing my first holiday party of the season right after, I had lots of leftovers sitting around. Most of my cooked leftovers went fast, what with the visitors and hangers-on who lingered over the weekend. One big leftover I had was 2/3 of an inexpensive but tasty smoked ham that I got on sale for $7.00, what would normally be $23. You have got to love holiday sales. The rest of my leftovers were half used bundles of vegetables and herbs. Soups are great for clearing up the loose ends lounging around in the bottom of your fridge so I started slicing and dicing to feed the hungry crowd.
When I was a kid I was told to eat my vegetables so I'd grow up to be nice and strong. Apparently feeding vegetables to veggies makes them, too, quite robust. Or so a South African chap found when he used organic fertilizer that he makes from vegetable peelings to help grow a ginormous onion.
At just under 3 pounds the onion weighs 10 times more than the, er, garden variety. Henry Carr of Port Elizabeth has been growing vegetables for almost 40 years. When asked what he planned to do with his humongous onion, Carr said he'll soon be making some of his city's largest onion rings. Perhaps he'll want to don a pair of onion goggles when he prepares his oversized bar snack.
Onion goggles don't have the same effect as, say, beer goggles do. Much like swimming goggles, they have a foam seal around the edges that is designed to keep things out. In this case, they keep out the tear-causing onion fumes and allow you to see clearly as you do your prep work in the kitchen.
Your eyes water when you cut onions because the onion cells have enzymes that, when released, turn into irritating gasses. Once the gas reaches your eyes, the body starts producing tears to cleanse them.
You could still choose to wear swimming goggles to get the same effect, but thebenefit of choosing these is that they simply slip on like regular glasses and don't have an elastic band holding them in place. Plus, white plastic glasses with foam padding are simply all the rage this season. Didn't you know?
While once it seemed as though the only onion options were the generic sounding yellow, white and red, each variety of onion in the market is now labeled clearly - and there are a lot of them, in addition to those three standards. But what is the difference between them? The primary difference is sweetness, with some onions, known as sweet onions, lacking the sulfuric bite that most associate with an onion.
Sweet onions usually are available in summer and have a higher water content than so-called "storage onions", which contributes to their mild flavor. It also means that they have a somewhat shorter shelf life and are more delicate, prone to bruising, than their less-sweet counterparts. They can be used interchangeably with regular onions in cooking, since they will handle almost identically, but they will impart slightly different flavors to the finished dish. Many people prefer sweet onions in dishes that call for raw onions, such as salads, or for use on burgers and hot dogs.
Can you imagine eating a whole, raw onion by itself, let alone polishing it off in a little over a minute? 
Years ago I went out with a girl whose mother was named Lorraine. I'm not sure if she ever made quiche or not, but I probably wouldn't have eaten it. If you recall, real men don't eat quiche.
I was surfing around my friend Jade Walker's 
So what with Thanksgiving last week, and then throwing my first holiday party of the season right after, I had lots of leftovers sitting around. Most of my cooked leftovers went fast, what with the visitors and hangers-on who lingered over the weekend. One big leftover I had was 2/3 of an inexpensive but tasty smoked ham that I got on sale for $7.00, what would normally be $23. You have got to love holiday sales. The rest of my leftovers were half used bundles of vegetables and herbs. Soups are great for clearing up the loose ends lounging around in the bottom of your fridge so I started slicing and dicing to feed the hungry crowd.
When I was a kid I was told to eat my vegetables so I'd grow up to be nice and strong. Apparently feeding vegetables to veggies makes them, too, quite robust. Or so a South African chap found when he used organic fertilizer that he makes from vegetable peelings to help grow a ginormous onion.
Onion goggles
While once it seemed as though the only onion options were the generic sounding yellow, white and red, each variety of onion in the market is now labeled clearly - and there are a lot of them, in addition to those three standards. But what is the difference between them? The primary difference is sweetness, with some onions, known as sweet onions, lacking the sulfuric bite that most associate with an onion. 
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