Alium wealth

Well, we thought that we were rich in onions with the harvest of our Walla Wallas. And indeed we are. The caramelized onions we made and ate on top of everything for a week. That was wealth. And the onions I sauteed last night with chard and fresh tomatoes and tossed with pasta. That was luxury. But I think we are reaching slightly ridiculous heights with the number of onions I pulled out of the garden today.

Remember those photos? The ones with the labels from my onion bed? Well, I pulled out the rest of the shallots- the ones that were sacrificed for the love of beans and are consequently puny. And I pulled the New York Earlies which were not early and not impressive in any other way either. And I pulled the four rows of Cortlands. They weren't as big as the Walla Wallas, but they'll be a lot harder, and a lot longer lasting in our root cellar. (The root cellar that I hope we'll have finished by the time the onions are dry and cured.)

When you open the door from our kitchen into the garage, the smell of aliums is overwhelmingly, overpoweringly intense. My hands were funky with the smell of onion. But we won't buy an onion for the next 9 months. Rich, rich, rich indeed.

(photo credit to my hubby, Ralph)

Monday Night Dinner

I came home early after hitting the mid-afternoon blahs. The office was so quiet today - no distractions, no bustle, no stimulation, and as the heat built over the course of the afternoon, I found myself increasingly drifting laterally, getting sidetracked from the work at hand to delve into something not so relevant to what I should have been doing... this for instance.

I came home with groceries and Ralph, uncharacteristically, came immediately away from his work in the office and we put away the cold stuff and then went right out to the hammock. (Though this gives us rather more agency than we felt at the time. Maybe it's better to say we drifted out to the hammock). He is reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which I'm actually also reading in between novels. But today I read The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. It is witty, engaging, hard to put down. And so we spent the late afternoon, swinging gently back and forth, in the shade of two maple trees, head to toe in the hammock.

When we finally came in for dinner, I pulled out the left-over chicken breast from last night's grilled whole chicken- Ralph (dear, clever, forward-thinking Ralph) had shredded it last night before putting it away. I mixed the chicken with a diced spring onion from the garden, basil, mayo, Dijon mustard, horseradish, and capers. It was delicious. We ate it on bread with lettuce from Arethusa Farm- a red buttercrunch lettuce, one of my favorites that I never remember to plant in our own garden. Very nice cap to a lazy Monday evening.

I really wanted a photo to post because the meal was lovely to look at with that bright red lettuce, but alas, it was good, what can I say? I didn't get to it in time. So instead, here are some photos I took of our garden aliums- looking vibrant and vigorous from all our rain.