My Lunch Break

I was not feeling up to working out over lunch today.  It’s one of the fringe benefits of having small children–you end up with every cold and sniffle that they do just usually delayed a day or two.

What to do…

I have done a variation of this pickling recipe before and followed something similar this time.  I omitted the turmeric, which accounts for the lack of a golden colored brine, and increased the amount of garlic cloves because that is the one thing that my father cannot get enough of when he opens a jar.

Wanting to see what the impact of added spices was I omitted any additional spices in the second set of jars (the six on the right). It will be interesting to see what the difference is in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, I might have gone a little overboard during lunch.

 

Slow Cooker Caramelized Onions

Somehow, I found myself with a bag of onions that were starting to get a little soft and I was looking at being away from home for nearly a week.  Throwing the onions out seemed ridiculous, but no one wants to come home to a pile of rotting vegetables on their counter in the heat of summer.

Enter the slow cooker.  Using the slow cooker, a person can caramelize a batch of onions with no effort outside of maybe 5 or 10 minutes of chopping and a quick clean out of the pot eight to ten hours later.  Plus, caramelizing onions on the stove top properly takes a long time and some measure of attention.  Please do not listen to your recipes when they talk about getting onions golden in 5 or 10 minutes.  45 minutes maybe, but no less.  The sweetness takes time to develop and the slow cooker specializes in taking its time.

I just filled the crock with the onions I had on my counter and topped with a stick of butter cut into thin pats:

Set the slow cooker on high and leave it alone for eight to ten hours.  The end result is a pile of perfectly caramelized onions:

One word of advice, put the slow cooker outside if you have a good place.  If you do this inside you might end up with a revolt form your family members because the smells can get pretty intense.

I usually keep a small container of the finished product in the refrigerator and freeze the rest in small batches.  Caramelized onions are the perfect flavor blast for so many dishes: breakfast burritos, burgers, grilled fish…