Monday, August 29, 2011

How to cut an onion and a little hiatus

Just so my 2 readers know that I have not dropped off the face of the Earth, I wanted to let you know that I'm having hand surgery on Wed and won't be able to type for about 6 weeks.  My surgery wasn't unexpected.  It was scheduled for the end of September and I had lots of plans for posts as I had planned lots of freezer cooking.  Last Monday I spent the day cooking.  It was my birthday and I decided I was going to do what I wanted to do, and that was get a jump start on cooking meals for the family while I was recovering.  TGIM insisted that he could handle dinner, but I didn't want to have to eat pasta and/or take out every night.  Plus, when he goes back to work (he really can't take 5 weeks off) he doesn't get home until 6pm, that's way too late for dinner to be STARTING!  Anyway, TGIM thought I was crazy for starting already, after all my surgery was another month away.  One thing you need to know about me is generally, I am not a procrastinator, you just never know what's going to happen.  If I have a free minute or day, I'll get a jump on something for the future.  Not 3 hours after he told me I was nuts the doctor's office called and said they could get me in next week if I wanted.  Oh man did I want!  Ever since then, I've been on this mad quest to fill the freezer, and I sure have!  The one thing I didn't do was to take pictures to blog about things.  I just didn't have the time.  I was spending a solid 8-10 hours a day in the kitchen. 

Thankfully my girlfriend, Andrea, was on board with bulk cooking some breakfasts and lunches so we got together this weekend and made our own version of Hot Pockets for our respective husbands and children.  They were so good and we figured they cost us $.50 each to make, plus we can say every ingredients in them!  There are more things that I want to show you how to make and I totally will when I'm recovered.  Andrea and I plan to keep our version of hot pockets around as a staple.

I will leave you with this, how to chop an onion.  It's really easy and generally you can do it in less time than it takes to get out those whacker thingies.  And washing a knife is much faster and easier than one of those whacker things. 
 First, cut your onion in half from tip to root.
 Chop off the tip
 Peel it (and forget to take a picture).  Then make vertical slices being careful not to cut all the way to the root.  You don't want the slices falling apart.
 Rotate 90 degrees and then slice down
Now you've got some nice chopped onions.  If you're most people, you're done.
 You see these big pieces?  They bug me.
 To avoid that, before you make your vertical slices, do some horizontal ones.  Then continue as before
No more big pieces!

Super easy, anyone can do it.  Except Andrea who had to leave the room when I was chopping.  Here's a little tip, if in your meal planning you're going to be using a lot of chopped onions, do them all at once and keep them in a glass container in the fridge.  It makes life so much easier to have things prepped.

5 comments:

Suspinz: Dabbler in Many Things said...

Going to miss you. Best of luck with surgery and recovery. Looking forward to having you return in a few weeks' time.

Signed: Queen Procrastinator 2011 and On. (Who also chops extra onion to keep in the fridge, and fries extra bacon, too.)

Brady Balouga said...

Good luck with the surgery! Hope you got all of your meals prepared!

Debbie DP said...

Hope you are doing ok. Look forward to more cooking lessions

Faraz said...

It's really easy and generally you can do it in less time than it takes to get out those whacker thingies.

onlineshop said...

This post is so useful , thank you !