The Great Onion Debate–We Win!

Regular and long time readers will know that Tony and I despise onions.  Growing up our families cooked with them on a regular basis.  We would complain that we don’t like onions, our mother’s response would be “you can’t even taste them” to which we would reply “then why put them in anything?!”  I believe it was on our second or third date that we both learned of our hatred of onions and I think it was at that point that I thought to myself “I need to marry this man!”

I tried to shun them from my daughter.  I was successful until the age of 12 when she went to a sleepover.  They ordered a veggie pizza and not to be rude, Hannah took a piece of pizza that had peppers and onions on it.  When I went to pick her up the next day she ran to me and said “Mom, I had onions on a pizza and it was delicious!”  Sigh.

Flash forward a few years and Tony calls me at work.  He says “I have no idea what your daughter is cooking, but the whole house stinks of onions!”  When I called her later that day and asked what she fixed for lunch – she said “just caramelized onions with butter.”  She literally caramelized half an onion and ate it straight out of the pan.

So in November when I was helping my Mom with her churches chili dinner, I diced so many onions for her signature chili I thought for sure I would smell them on my hands for days.  I ended up bringing a container of the chili home, and upon inspection, I couldn’t really “see” the onions, so I heated it up and it was actually quite delicious.  I sent her an email saying that I loved her chili, even if it had onions in it!

Which brings us to yesterday.  My brother decided that we should have a taste test – sample the exact same chili except for the addition of onions in one.  I was bringing my award winning Buffalo Chicken Chili and I made a pinto bean veggie chili.  My Mom made the two test samples of chili.

My brother set up the ramekins – six in all – 3 of them contained the chili with onions, 3 without.  You had to rank the top three chilis that you thought had the most flavor.  My brothers argument is that onions enhance the flavor of food – not just make the food taste like onions.  His analogy is the same as adding salt to cookies – the salt enhances the flavor of the cookies, but they don’t taste salty.

My brother kept the “official” tally after each taste tester. You know when something is official is when you write it on your pad of paper.

Let the tasting begin!

The verdict???  After all the tastes were added up – ramekins 1,  4 and 5 contained NO ONIONS and received a tally of 15 votes.   Ramekins 2, 3 and 6 contained onions and received a tally of 12 votes!  Tony and I win!!  After all was said and done – my onion loving family (sans me) thought that the chili with no onions had more flavor.  Of course, my brother being scientific said that one test does not necessarily prove the hypothesis that onions don’t have flavor.  All I know is that Tony and I feel vindicated that onions don’t really belong on this earth.

All the grandkids except Hannah were there – it doesn’t happen very often so we had to take pictures – you’d think it would be easier now that they are teenagers and 20 somethings – but out of a couple dozen shots, this was the best one!

And I had to smile at my Momma taking pictures – she’s so short she had to raise her arms to take her picture!

And there was a lot of laughing!

And now its back to reality.  Monday.  Gah.  I have been so used to sleeping in this last week.  I work at the law firm today, then it’s a double tomorrow.  Since we had July 5 off earlier in the year to have a long weekend, I have to work on New Years Eve – and then I found out I am working the bar for New Years Eve at the restaurant.  We have a liquor license until 3:00 a.m, but I am hoping they are sticking to their 1:00 a.m. closing time!

Time to get my stuff together – make it a great day!