Giving Up Chicken Wings

This post about giving up chicken wings for marriage made me think of FMC and the onion, my mortal culinary enemy.

I hate onions. All onions. Worst of all are the sneaky onions: leeks, chives, and scallions. These are onions masquerading as other vegetables. Like immigrants coming through Ellis Island, they changed their names to pass more easily in society. But these sneaky onions don't fool me. I won't even eat a Chinese Chicken salad with scallions in it.

Of course, most people love onions, including FMC. There's enough widespread onion-affection to justify a cottage industry in onion products, like the Awesome Blossom, a battered, deep-fried onion available at Chili's, and Funyuns, the onion-flavored chip-like product. People like onions on hamburgers, on pizzas, in pasta. Frankly, it's disgusting. But I digress.

My point is that I hate onions to the point that I cannot kiss someone if they have eaten, and therefore taste like, onions. It just grosses me out. Incidentally, FMC feels the same exact way about ginger. Given the fact that he recently asked me to marry him, we've tacitly agreed to a future with very little onion and ginger in it.

However...he's recently been working ridiculous hours far away from our Westside apartment. He's usually gone by 4:30 a.m. and doesn't come home until 6:30 or 7:00 p.m., so we're apart basically all day. A couple of times in recent weeks, he's come home sweaty and tired, opening the door and greeting me with a kiss. A kiss that tastes like...onions.

This happened for the second time yesterday and I asked half-accusingly, "What did you have for lunch today?"

"Wha...? Uh, Mexican food. A, um, a burrito," he stammered.

"Hmmm," I said, Perry Mason-like. "Did it have...onions in it?"

"Um, well, yes," he said guiltily. "But come on! I hardly even remember what an onion tastes like anymore!"

I felt like a wife who denies her husband sex and complains when he comes home smelling like the office temp. Actually, I'm pretty glad he only smells like onions (instead of the office temp), because then there's no chance that he'll get stabbed and I'll end up in jail.

I guess it's time for me to end my second-hand onion-consumption-oppression regime. But he better believe that there are some goddamned ginger snaps in my future!