They Don’t Call Me Super Jenius For Nuthin

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Yow! I hate chopping onions, don’t you? Can you think of any part of cooking that is more blowful? I can’t. And I love the Zen of chopping any other veggie.

I think I’m extra-sensitive to onion fumes, too. I can’t even see what I’m chopping, which is not very safe, to say the least.

So I had an idea today, while I was shredding carrots for a potato salad and was about to move on to the onions: why not shred them, too?

It’s so rad; I love it. It took about 20 seconds to do the whole onion. Of course, you have to not mind that you will end up with onion slaw, rather than onion chunks. I don’t. Another drawback is that I think you release even more onion fumes, so do it quick and then stick your head in the freezer. But an advantage is that the slaw will disguise the inevitable skin that comes off your thumb when you grate things.

(El Mendez: Of course I did not get any thumb-skin into the salad that I am bringing to your barbecue today.)

I’m sure I didn’t invent this, but I’m glad I figured it out.

27 thoughts on “They Don’t Call Me Super Jenius For Nuthin”

  1. I wear contact lenses, so I never get onion-weepy when chopping. Cool remedy you figured out, though.
    SJ, I am a lurker who reads your blog faithfully. I just want to say that I think you are SO funny, that your family is lovely, and that I spent yesterday morning lounging in my nightie ignoring my dogs so that I could read your blogathon all at once. Thanks for inspiring me to write whenever I check in to see what’s going on in your world.
    :)

  2. SJ, I have found your site through Joshua, and can not stop snorting/laughing. I’m forcing myself to IGNORE your achives instead of plowing through them all right this minute.

    Would that I were an evil librarian like you. More than that, would that you were in my UW library school class way back in ’94.

  3. Peep:

    Hi! Welcome aboard, officially. :)

    Cory: Wow! An alum…I’m sure you and I have some things we could discuss! The nickname “King Janes” would actually mean something to you if I wrote about him, ho ho ho.

  4. i wear my swim goggles when i chop onions – i look ridiculous, but don’t shed a tear.

  6. My mom used to put 1/2 of a flour tortilla in her mouth (hanging out of her mouth) when chopping onions. I never understood why and I didn’t bother asking. You know, just one of those nutty things parents do. Until one day I had to chop the onions. I decided to do the same. Wallah! The tortilla sucks up the fumes instead of your eyes. Try it sometime. It really works. The one downside though is I always want to bite into the tortilla and it sometimes gets a little soggy if you leave it in your mouth too long…

  8. Used to work in a cafeteria. The folks in charge of onions used safety glasses. They afford a bit more visibility than swim goggles, and allow for various handiness-related cover stories.

  9. Swim goggles work like a charm! And its a great way to impress others, showing them that you can cook and look stylish all at the same time. :)

  12. I’ve heard that chewing gum helps with onion fumes. Unfortunately, I never remember until I’m already chopping and I don’t want to stop and wash my hands to go search for gum. I really like the goggle idea, though. Maybe I’ll remember to try that next time.

  13. Back when I used to work at Some Pizza Place Up North (the one that, as it happens, is right by SJ’s house), we did tons of onions in the food processor and it always sucked the proverbial shit peanut out of the proverbial dead rhino’s asshole. Then one day on my way to work I found a pair of ski goggles in the street. Fairly nice ones that probably fell out of the back of some doorknobs pick-up. So I brought them with me– they worked like a charm.
    Then a couple of weeks later somebody I worked with stole them because ski goggles are, apparently, expensive. I protested by refusing to do onions ever again, but the cocknocker that stole the things never did cop to it.
    Then I quit that job and went to work somewhere else. Then I got a better job. Now I don’t have to cut onions unless I feel like it.
    The end.

  14. Well, I have now officially read the entire back-blog, including the archived stuff and all comments. I just have to say you are wonderful, the commentators crack me up, and I’d probably fall in love with Joshua if I believed in long-distance relationshipping. I think “Tuesday Night” from Dec. 2002 is probably my favorite, since I once had a concussion that felt like that. Thanks for these tastes of your divine artistry and silliness.

  19. best thing in the world tossing the onion in the freezer for 20 minutes.. love doing that, cause I win the fight against the evil onion fumes..

  23. I don’t care if you’ve stopped talking about onions and are now talking about rhinos and peanuts. I speak of the onion.

    I read somewhere if you chopped the onion in a sinkful of water (UNDER the water! wooaaah!) then it doesn’t get all fumey. So, you know, my logical progression from that is that if you froze the onion with liquid nitrogen, then hit it with a hammer, there’d be no fumes at all.

    Plus, you’d be likely to have some freezy nitrogen goodness left over and you could do all sorts of stuff that bothered you. Don’t like washing clothes? freeze em, hit em with a hammer. Jehovas witnesses? We have the technology.

  24. I wonder if there are people in the S and M world who would get turned on by this story…Is there like a ‘naked girl/onion tears’ website?

    No, really SJ thanks! As a teenager if I had to cook I used to make my brother cut the onions. Now I make my husband. But this will work if I start to feel guilty about that and ever cut one myself.

  25. I wouldn’t think anyone should be above paying a stranger five bucks to just go ahead and peel that onion for us. I think we’ve hit upon something here that will simultaneously a) relieve us from harmful kitchen drudgery, and b)work on the unemployment rate. hell, it’s a better plan that doofus’ in the white house, right?

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