Country Roads

Onions and Rosie
Hello Rosie. I promised that your delightful story would be the theme of my column and here it is. Enjoy.
Rosie and her friend and neighbor, Donna, were strolling through the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market on opening day. The sun’s warmth works its way through the overcast morning when Rosie is around. We were mentioning the arrival of spring onions – those magical, sweet and delicious additions or stand-alones to dinner, which only the wise and experienced farmers know how to grow. “Do you know what to do when you’ve been busy all day and your family is due to arrive and you haven’t begun anything for dinner,” asked Rosie?
“No, what?”
“Cook up an onion in a frying pan!”
The three of us laughed together, knowing that simple answer held great truth.
The onion is anything but simple, as children learn at an early age when they are excited to be assistant cooks in the kitchen. (Take advantage of this, young moms and dads, for every floury mess and broken egg before their time results in forming the child’s facility for baking everything from pancakes to birthday cakes.)
Onions require great care in planting and choice. Most of us don’t grow them because we haven’t experienced success. So, we are grateful for those with the knowledge and weeding that get it done and have those beauties on their market tables in May and June.
Many of the sweet onions which are harvested in spring have names denoting geographical regions from which they were grown. Vidalia (Georgia), Walla Walla (Washington), Imperial Sweet (California’s Imperial Valley) are all “market” names, not “variety” names. (UC Extension info)
Onions are differentiated by the day length required. Spring onions are short-day, which means that they “bulb” under 12-14 hours of daylight; intermediate, 13-15 hours; or long-day, 14-16 hours. They are all planted in the fall and harvested from April to June.
Although they are not famous for storing – summer and fall onions are the ones to buy in abundance for winter – they keep well enough in your refrigerator.
Don’t let the fancy names fool you. Probably any of the onions grown for spring are nearly as sweet as an apple when cooked and they don’t have to grow in Walla Walla to bear that name. The Vidalians of Georgia, however, passed legislation making it illegal to sell any onion with its name unless it is grown in their soil.
Onions are part of the Allium Family which includes all things onion-flavored down to the tiny, green chive. In between are shallots, garlic and leeks, to name a few.
The easiest to grow are chives, and if you know a friend with a clump of them you might ask for a small part. Using a trowel (you happened to have one in your purse) dig down into the root system and work it out from the mother plant.
Divide up the small plants and give them a bit of space in a part of your garden near the kitchen. They will all grow into a mature plant. Snip the leaves for your baked potato, salad, or scrambled eggs. If not kept cut they will flower and even the flowers are edible. Bees love the blossoms, so how does honey not taste like onion? Only the bee knows.
Personally, I don’t mind, even relish, onions simply cut in quarters and shoved around in a frying pan, broken up when necessary to cook. I like to recognize them in a stir fry, rather than minced into undecipherable pieces. However, if you must cut them small, working the sharpest of knives down through the onion almost to the bottom but not quite, then reversing the direction and slicing again in close lines will keep you from crying profusely. Once you have the cuts made, hold the onion on its side and slice through the lines releasing all the small pieces. If you can’t picture what I’ve just written, don’t worry, just cry.
Rosie, do you mind if I tell the readers just a bit about you? You don’t mind. Rosie is the sister of Flora. They are part of a very large family from Minnesota. Flora lived in Healdsburg with her husband and when she was widowed Rosie would come and stay and the two sisters would share weeks together, even driving to San Francisco to folk dance. They were in their 80s at that time.
Flora passed away a couple of years ago but Rosie still comes to her house for visits and, with neighbor, Donna, walks through the market. She is one delightful Minnesotan.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.