Eating Onions Together

September 1st, 2006

Jennifer and I have become aware of a trend. Trends abound in our lives, many dissociated from us, distanced by social or cultural boundaries, something noticed (perhaps clouded by myopia) from afar. But this trend involves something central to everyone’s lives, something we cannot escape: food.

Alton Brown recently aired a four-part series called Feasting on Asphalt in which he and a small crew motored across country on narrow roads avoiding interstates and their resulting homogenization. He was unsettled by his findings that American road food, the mom and pop diners, were being choked out of existence by the familiar and “safe” name brand chains clogging our highways. His experiences made us reflect on our own eating habits.

So this trend we’ve found is one of safe eating. Safe not from the cardiologist’s perspective, but a different kind of culinary security. Many years ago I overheard a cook and owner of a local restaurant in a small town say that it wasn’t important that his food be good, only that it be consistent. Change, it seems, is worse than bland. In my youth I scoffed at his declaration, but now I see the wisdom of it. It is safer for me to revisit a big chain restaurant and order the same item over and over, maybe the only thing I’ve ever tried, than to take a chance and order something I’ve never dreamt of before.

This trend of safety extends to the home kitchen as well. We have shelves of cookbooks, all purchased with great optimism, filled with the hope of so many delicious possibilities. Yet from these books, we mark the safest selections, ones we know that we will like, and those become the staple pages. The bindings of these books eventually weaken, flattening the books when opened to these favorites.

The saddest consequence of this trend of safe food is that eating becomes less personal, less important, less nourishing to our souls. I know of a family in a nearby house that never eats a home cooked meal. They openly admit that they eat out every night. They miss out on the bonding between people who create something as important as food, something that sustains our lives. I know they are not the only ones.

Jennifer found this delightful quote from Charles Warner’s 1871 book My Summer in a Garden:

“I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion; but I think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt not that all men and women love the onion; but few confess their love. Affection for it is concealed… Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration.”

We were immediately smitten with the sentiment and based the name of our new blog from it. That, and we both love onions. And we love eating together. Not just the sitting down to plates of food, but sharing the process of cooking as well as the pleasures of consuming creations made together.

Jennifer speaks fondly and frequently of memories of eating at her grandmother’s home. Every meal there was served with a slice of onion. It makes me wonder if she was familiar with Warner’s words. If not, I believe that she embraced the idea.

Jennifer and I embark on a new culinary quest. We plan to share our experiences through these pages. Not everything we eat will have onions, not everything we eat will be home cooked, but we will try to break out of our safety zone.

Entry Filed under: Between meals