I'm A Lonely Little Petunia In An Onion Patch . . .

My house smells like onions. Our bed smells like onions. Our clothes and my hair smell like onions. According to our daughter, halfway up our (quarter mile long) driveway it smells like onions.

I told you previously that because of the less-than-adequate growing season just passed, my yellow storage onions didn't have quite enough time to mature in the garden. When I had to harvest them because of extreme drop in temperatures (and snow, sleet, wind, rain and hail), the tops weren't dried up much. I lopped off the green tops and have them stored in our heat-tempered garage. I've been sorting through them about every other day and am very surprised to see some (very few) of them looking fairly good . . . like I might be able to store them (for a little while at least) as they are.

But the majority are just going to mold rather than keep for any length of time so I've been concentrating on dehydrating those.

When I work in the kitchen taking off the outer skins and slicing them up to lay out on the dehydrator trays, the fumes are so strong I can hardly tolerate the burning in my eyes . . . let alone the fact that I can't see for the tears streaming out of my eyes and am in fear of cutting off a finger or two.

When starting this morning's batch I knew I had to do something different so I enlisted my husband's help and we set up a small fan on the counter blowing right over the cutting board and another window fan directly across the room blowing air out of the room. This did help a lot and I was able to get the eight trays of the dehydrator filled without nearly as much agony (and grumping and grousing) on my part.

We've got the dehydrator set up out in our attached garage but somehow, the aroma still wafts its way into and through the whole house. Not the worst smell in the world certainly, but very noticeable.

I guesstimate I've got at least three more fillings of the dehydrator yet to do. Roy has suggested I dump the whole batch of onions in the compost heap, but I can't see wasting all those (blasted slow-growing, non-maturing) onions I nurtured all summer.

Penny-wise and pound-foolish? Could be. Wouldn't be the first time I've made a not-very-bright decision.

Uh-oh. Roy just came in for a few minutes from working outside and announced we had to figure out some sort of a new system before I do yet another batch. I've been in the house all day and have apparently become slightly desensitized to the smell but he says it's overwhelming and becoming more than a little unpleasant. (Maybe that's why I have such a headache? Can onion fumes be noxious? Gosh, it's dangerous trying to be self-sufficient.)