The man driving a small car, with a huge dog in the passenger side, both of them looking as though this was the most normal thing in the world, a level of peaceful intimacy between them that was enviable.
A youngish man in an SUV, turning slightly to look incredulously, and say, "What?!" to some toddler, who had no doubt said/done something very funny.
Here we go, I'm about to commit an absolute blogging crime: writing a post about food.
You've heard what the experts have had to say--"No one is interested in what you had for lunch! Stop tweeting and Facebook-ing your food!" And I have disregarded that advice and tweeted about food before. It's fun to break the rules sometimes!
And I suppose that they're actually right, those experts, in a way. Taking a photo of your pan-seared ahi tuna or whatever, and saying, "Out with the gang at that great new restaurant!" may be a pretty good thing for your inner circle of internet pals, the folks you work with, your family, your down the street neighbor who's on your Facebook, and whatnot, but it's not something that will generally hold the interest of anyone outside that tight-knit inner circle.
I think that a posting of any kind having to do with food should be something that causes people to sit up and take notice--you've got to have something to say about food. You don't necessarily have to be Jacques Pepin, but you have to have a reason for writing what you do, an awareness of what you like and don't like and why. Some kind of an observation or perspective on a food matter. These are the kinds of things that will draw more people than your Aunt Gertrude (who reads all your stuff!) to be interested.
And now, I'm sure people are going to hate me or something, because I said all of that simply to set up a few words that were rattling through my brain about onions. Whoever has read this far can judge whether or not I adhered to my own self-imposed expert rules.
The Whole Thing About Liking/Not Liking Onions
Almost everyone starts out as a kid not liking onions. It's something about their texture, it can be kind of "papery" in a weird way. Certainly, if your mom or whoever was the cook when you were growing up can really ruin your experience of onions by not cooking them properly or throwing them on badly cooked meat, especially if you're the type of kid like I was who also had a hard time liking red meat. Fried onions can seem kind of slimy and weird. The whole thing leaves you feeling like you'd be fine if you never ate another onion again.
But then, at least in my case, things happen as you get a little older. You start noticing that nice, fresh, thinly sliced onion tastes pretty darn good on a cheeseburger. In fact, onions and cheese tend to go together really well, "cheese and onion" is sort of a food institution.
You realize that red onions are delicious in salads, pasta, and on pizza. In fact, if you're making roasted vegetables, they're really good by themselves.
And then, it happens: someone serves you Roasted Cipollini Onions, which are the kind of thing that absolutely melts in your mouth. The first time I had these, it was so good I nearly came unglued. The way this dish is made, the onions have a sweet/savory nut-like flavor that can send you over the moon. Not everyone crosses the bridge from hating onions to liking them, they can almost be classified in that snooty category of foods thought of as "an acquired taste." As a person who has made that jump, I can tell you that I feel a little more like a real adult, knowing that I have embraced onions as a culinary friend.
Interestingly, just last week I was in a video chatroom where they were debating on the value of online ed solutions like Coursera. I'm taking a writing class there, and I piped in with my opinion that it may be good for learning stuff on your own, such as punching up your writing skills, but that it wouldn't be sufficient to prepare you for a job in business. It seems that Laurie Pickard is gearing up to prove me wrong.
There are so many reasons today why traditional higher ed is not a good fit for many of us out there. One example would be the high cost to parents who send their kids out to college, pay a lot into it, and wind up having to pay even more $$ because instead of buckling down and studying, Jr. has been doing nothing but drinking, partying, and getting into trouble. Jr. then has to come back home, and, rather than gain an MBA type position, he has to work the fry station at McDonald's.
No disrespect to McDonalds, though, because as I recall when I worked there, they actually worked *with* me to work out a schedule where I could take some college classes. Not enough of the entry level workplaces out there are willing to do that these days.
As a person who's had to balance work and school, and now these days with an added load of having to take care of elderly parents, having an educational resource that I can slip into the narrow cracks of my free time is an immense blessing.
In this economy, people are less willing to shell out the bucks to an institution whose idea of improvement may be only beefing up the sports program, or a cosmetic overhaul of the cafeteria/food court. When you consider the ever growing unlikelihood that a brick and mortar degree will lead to a job, large colleges setting up free MOOCs may be their first effort at remaining relevant to the needs of the future workforce.
So I was succumbing to the "internet productivity" thing, forging ahead in the "quest for inbox zero", diligently cleaning out my Gmail account, when something weird happened.
I was searching and deleting, getting rid of whole swaths of email I would never read. Click, and gone were hundreds of crappy messages from the Democratic party, click, now giant blocks of pagan message board communiques erased.
After getting rid of a couple thousand emails, I thought I should surface in the front room, come up for air and get something to eat. A nice salad from the store, perhaps.
As I was eating, my brain started cycling over the task I had been doing. Emails began to scroll through my head. All of a sudden, I felt as though the part of my brain that was emotionally prepared to eat green onions was missing.
There was one in my mouth. "This is crunchy in a way I'm not in the mood to deal with!" I thought.
Clearly, I am not the type of person who needs Google Glass...
