I was in town for only a week between trips just now. While Bill and I travel often, this sort of thing is much more commonly his domain than mine. In fact, he’s nearly in the same boat. Just as I was leaving for San Diego, he was sent by work to New York City to do some things over a weekend. This time, though, he was the one back sooner.

As we have a once a week vegetable delivery from a local(-ish) farm, this sort of travel can lead to excessive veggies in our fridge. Combine that with our farm telling us to please use or freeze the onions as quickly as possible, and our having done a surprisingly good job gardening to get a recipe for me finding myself last Friday staring at a bunch of food that I either needed to deal with before we left this morning, or hope was going to be good when we returned. As we were going to be returning the day of another veggie delivery, and we’d been informed weeks ago that the onions had a very limited life expectancy, I opted to spend some time preserving.

So what is the answer to having a ton of food in the house and not being around much right now? As always, my answer is my freezer.

I washed everything in a dilute vinegar solution. I’m not totally sure why this is my newest go-to veggie cleaner, but I blame Erica at Northwest Edible. Something about tomato skins.

The onions, guys. The onions. I’ll tell you about the rest of what I processed on this upcoming Friday or sometime next week. But the onions? They’re a story unto themselves…

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but onions are my kitchen nemesis. I enjoy eating them, they’re vital for a number of recipes, but I can barely cut one without tearing up. Two, and the tears are streaming down my face like I’m remembering a deceased pet. Sometimes including, and I didn’t know this could happen before I took up food blogging, the experience of a slightly runny nose. Though, thankfully, that’s not nearly so extreme.

What to do with a 6 qt bowl full of onions?

If you said, “put them in the food processor,” you said what I said. Because, frankly, chopping that many onions by hand was going to result in a lopped-off finger and a trip to the ER with hopes they could reattach it.

That many onions? Even if Bill cuts them across the room from me, by the end, I’ll be tearing up. So, definitely food processor.

I hate using the food processor to chop onions. Bill’s dad & step-mother got us a tiny food processor for chopping onions once. The problem is that food processors kind of mash onions more than they chop them. But I figured, for this job, a little mashed was ok. That’s what I’ve gotten in the past.

Guys, I ended up with two quart-sized bags of onion PUREE. AND I was crying at the end. But at least my fingers were all intact.

Seriously. Basically I made raw onion soup. I was afraid I needed to write on the bags “ONIONS! NOT mashed potatoes!” Just in case.

I think I’m going to try to turn one bag into “fast” French onion soup. If it works, I’ll do it to the other one too. If not, I have no fucking idea what to do with this. Nothing calls for so much damn onion…

Anyone have any suggestions?