Of Zucchini, Onions, and Colds

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I bought zucchini. Not that buying zucchini is always a mistake in our house; I can usually find a use for it, whether it's in bread or some sort of pan-fried concoction. My mistake was buying a lot of zucchini, three zucchini to be exact. These weren’t ordinary-sized zucchini that could be easily mistaken for wimpy cucumbers. Rather, these were gigantic, enormous, even ginormous zucchini that could double as a club for defense should I encounter any hostility in the parking lot, possibly from roving gangs of the elderly intent on stealing my cart and returning it for the quarter deposit.

The three were wrapped together and selling for an outstanding price, slightly more than the cost of a single mortal zucchini. I brought them home figuring that I could use them in a couple recipes and be done. I started with a batch of zucchini bread, and was shocked to discover that one provided all the shreddings needed instead of the two to three called for in the recipe. With one down, I whipped out the second one for dinner last night. I was afraid that if I didn’t do something soon they’d spoil. Plus they were starting to attract lighter objects in the refrigerator like the relish and processed cheese slices with their gravitational pull.

I didn’t know what I wanted to make with it, so I let my imagination run wild, throwing it in a skillet with chicken and garlic and frying it with some Italian dressing. It needed a little something extra for flavor, so I threw in some onion that I bought that morning.

To my surprise, I didn’t buy just any onion; I bought The World’s Strongest Onion. It was a yellow onion, which is usually a wussier variety than the more common white onions. They’re sometimes referred to as “sweet” by people with a better imagination than I. They still taste and reek like onions to me, just not as concentrated, and I know what white onions reek like having chopped more than my share for footlongs in my fast food days.

I discovered the pugnacity of The World’s Strongest Onion soon after cutting it. My nose started burning, my eyes started watering, and just in case I missed those signs, Ellie was standing a few feet away letting me know that the stench in her uber-pregnant state made her want to retch. To save us from the rank I moved quickly, as quickly as the Philadelphia Eagles season going down the drain. I turned on the drag out fan, finished chopping, and stepped outside to let my sinuses recover.

After frying, everything tasted good enough, outstanding if you consider that I don’t know what I’m doing in the kitchen, but my sinuses still burned. A short while later I developed a bit of a postnasal drip. I thought I must have inhaled too much onion concentrate. Then the headache set in. Then I tried going to sleep but my sinuses started screaming at me for daring to ask them to operate in the horizontal position.

This morning I awoke late with a throat full of phlegm and a toddler in her crib screaming in anticipation of the day. Instead of overdosing on eau d’onion, I’ve caught a cold. This cold hit quickly like a ton of ginormous zucchini, though infuriating my sinuses with onion essence probably helped its development. Now I get to fight my way through the day with a cold and a toddler who won’t nap as long as she should or as long daddy needs her to do. She hasn’t napped more than two hours a day for more than a week, which is a stunning change from the three to four hour naps she was giving me. Her nap has been about an hour long the past two days. Maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow, if my cold lets me wake up in time.