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ONION RESOURCES From Aliment to Ornament The history of the onion. Gophers and Grasshoppers Don't Eat Onions That old "onions are bad for you" theory again. Onions, a Gift of the Gods On a more cheerful note, the aphrodisiacal properties of onions. No Cry Onions Epicurious readers offer tips for chopping onions. Onion Myths Who knew there was such controversy surrounding this little bulb? The Vidalia Onion Factory The sweet Vidalia Onion is Georgia's state vegetable -- order them here, find recipes and learn about their nutritional value. ONION RECIPES: Grilled Onions Marinated Cucumbers and Onions Pickled Onions Caramelized Onions Okra and Onion Pickle Browned Onion and Corn Pilaf Soupe a L'oignon au Fromage (French Onion Soup)

The best sauce I ever made had just three ingredients: butter, onion and lemon. It was a sauce for grilled salmon. And it was the onions, this time, which almost caused our parting of the ways. Our friends who summer on Long Island are professors of theater. They manage to be both unassuming and theatrical at the same time. Their house is in a town near East Hampton that has no pretensions, except for its utter lack of pretension. We haven't been invited out there since the episode with the onions. The roadside stand didn't have much. Maybe a few tomatoes, some corn, and fat bunches of six or eight onions with everything still attached -- big green tops tied together with rubber bands. Hairy roots, with clods of dirt, shooting out of each bulb. Wherever we go, we try to patronize the local farmers, and try the local specialties. Maybe onions are rather plain to be a specialty, but these specimens seemed, in the shorthand Rosanne and I jokingly use, to be the "ham of the region." As I reached for the onions I could see Rosanne's jaw tightening. Then everything else tightened, too. I think the bunch of onions was $1.50, maybe $2. So I immediately discounted money as a source of my wife's fury. "We already have onions at home." "Yes, but these are special." "They're so dirty." "We can wash them." I guess we could have gone on like this for a long time. Already our hosts were shifting uneasily. Trying to make jokes to break the spell. Was control the issue ? Was it profligate to buy even two dollar's worth of something we didn't really need? Or was dirt, in fact, the main objection? When we got back to the cottage, and the dinner menu was set, I volunteered to use our onions as the base for a sauce to go over the salmon. Rosanne and I often made fried potatoes with onions, and we have experimented for years with burning the onions for varying amounts of time to produce that magical caramelized effect. But never before, nor since, have I achieved quite the perfect sweet, tangy taste and interesting consistency that made this lightly grilled salmon one of the best dishes any of us had tasted. And even in the cooking of these onions, as they crept from white to clear to brown and then to the blackest black, it seemed Rosanne's fury was lending them potency, or perhaps her anger was drawing off their bitterness. None of us enjoyed this exquisite dish, though, because the high-tension wires between Rosanne and me were sparking and snapping. I'm not sure we said a civil word to each other until we were on the train home the next day. I do remember Rosanne melting just a bit when we used our leftover onions for a spaghetti sauce later that week. Somehow, the country onions were no longer evil by then. Our Long Island friends have told us that they still make the salmon with burnt local onions for summer visitors, always giving us the credit. And regaling their guests, no doubt, with blow-by-blow recreations of our tiff. How did these onions come between us? Rosanne not only oversees our budget, she plans our food. Nothing extra or frivolous ever comes back from the market, just what fits into the recipes for that week. We didn't need onions, and there was no conceivable way they were even a treat, like ice cream. For Rosanne, my buying them was a rejection of a role she takes very seriously and which is at the core of who she is in our relationship. She's in every sense of the word a home-maker, though in no sense of the word a house-wife. The onions threatened her and mocked her careful and attentive work. I'm not sure our friends, or rather our former friends, would have understood.