Begging absolution of lèse majesté, Today's Word is a repeat of the Chief's post
of Mon Mar 26 03:05:14 2001

a repeat of the Chief's post of Mon Mar 26 03:05:14 2001

So he likes onions. So do I.

Cheer leader: How do we like our onions? Raw,raw,raw!

All this chat is bringing tears to my eyes.

So, peel and cut onions under running water from faucet.

peel and cut onions under running water

Eewww! And wash all the good stuff down the drain? Next thang you're gone be telling us to eat flavorless, odorless garlic pills.

Keep them in the refrigerator, cut them cold.. the volatile compounds diffuse less when cold.. since they are what causes the crying..
Once they are cut, let them warm up to room temperature, and they are fine.

Dear of troy: forgive my penchant for quibbling, but "volatile" refers to passing
from liquid to vapor. The problem with onions is creating aerosol, a very fine mist,
by knife compressing onion because of wedge cross section of blade. I used to
make paring knives from hacksaw blades just to get thin blade for use on fruits
and vegetable.
My mother's favorite paring knife was from ancient Civil War messkit, and many
decades of use had made it paper thin. She wept copiously when it finally broke.
A Tugboat Annie type who helped her in the kitchen brought her a long series
of knives her husband, the garbage collector, had found while he was sorting
garbage to get raw materials for fermentation into booze he sold as sideline.
My father made dozens of thin bladed paring knives, but was never able to make
one so perfect as the one that broke.

Remember the movie entitled something like Like Water for Chocolate? (Sorry if I screwed up the title; it's been a while...)

Anyway, the central in the movie put a chunk of onion on the top of her head to keep her from crying while peeling and cutting up onions.

And I tried it.

And it worked. No joke.

Now go explain that, wwh!

WW

A friend of mine advised sticking ones tongue out when chopping onions and radishes. Suspecting a joke I dismissed it, as did my friend Cath. The next week, when having coffee we both admitted that we had gone home and tried it alone, and that it had worked!

put a chunk of onion on the top of her head

It forces you to keep your back straight and your head up instead of hunched over the onion. The onion juices go more or less straight up and miss your eyes.

Super explanation, Faldage!! Onion juices go straight up!!

And now I'll explain why the tongue sticking out also works:

You see, your tongue stick out like a big ol' diving board in front of your face, right? And those juices going straight up that Faldage just taught us about get blocked by your big ol' diving board tongue, you know? They just cain't make it past that tonguey barrier.