Onion Ideas, Tips & Guides

If you’re well-versed in TikTok food trends—cottage cheese, rat snacks, or boozy pineapple spears, anyone?—you may already know about the recent sushi-related food trend that influencers are trying their hand at: the sushi bake. This riff on the super popular Japanese dish is quick and easy to prepare, making the flavors of sushi much more accessible from home.

Evergreen trees and shrubs are prone to unsightly damage from winter storms. They can be splayed open like a blooming onion or flattened like a pancake by the weight of heavy snow or ice loads. Damaged shrubs sometimes resurrect themselves in a matter of days or weeks; other times, they require severe pruning and a long restoration period. Fortunately, diligent gardeners can take a few actions to prevent serious damage.

Cold Winter days call for warm, comforting soups. This is one of my family’s favorite on a cold Winter’s day! Roasting the vegetables helps to bring out their flavor, allowing for minimal added fat and salt, while not compromising on flavor. This recipe makes a hearty vegetable soup thick with tomatoes, onion, green bell peppers, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, and barley. You can add additional broth if you prefer, and the soup also freezes well. To learn more about the safe handling of vegetables, check out HGIC 3517, Safe Handling of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. Enjoy!

Fresh South Carolina tomatoes harvested in the summer months are true delicacies. They really are at their best with bare minimum preparation. A Pico de Gallo style salsa combines ingredients that highlight a super fresh summer tomato. The following recipe is simple, easy to prepare, and packed full of flavor.

Peach season is here in South Carolina, adding to the abundance of fresh produce on kitchen counters. A quick and different appetizer is this tasty peach salsa. This sweet alternative to your usual salsa is a nice combination of fresh garden produce and fresh peaches. Feeling creative? Add or omit ingredients to fit your tastes.

What’s for dinner? Instead of getting take out or running to the grocery store, consider “using what you have on hand”. A beauty YouTuber called it ‘shop your stash’ as she described using what you have one hand. With that, I will share a simple dish I recently prepared that my family really enjoyed.

Many of our tried and true recipes and dishes can be ‘modified’ to increase vegetables, fiber, and fruits by making simple adjustments to meals we already eat. Many of us love watching chefs on TV but tend to go back to old favorites, i.e., macaroni and cheese, potato salad, beef stew, soup, fried chicken, broccoli casserole, spaghetti, etc.

This broccoli, apple, pecan salad combines many of our favorite Fall foods. Enjoy for a quick and easy fall salad!

Many gardeners have a collection of seed packets that contain seeds that didn’t make it into the garden in years past. Before purchasing more seed, check the stock of any seed still on hand from past seasons. Even when stored properly in a cool, dry location, seed longevity varies by species. Corn, lettuce, onion, impatiens, and pansy seeds, for instance, can be short-lived, losing viability after one or two years. Even though some of the seeds may still germinate, the germination rate declines, decreasing the likelihood of healthy seedling vigor. An easy test can be performed to see if the seed will still germinate.

Traditional beef rouladen is a German dish in which thinly sliced beef is wrapped around varying vegetables and then cooked until tender. When I was in high school, my mom and I found a recipe for beef rouladen in our church cookbook. We quickly fell in love with the recipe, and it became a family favorite. I lovingly and jokingly named it “Pickle Steak.” When I went away for college and then moved from home, I always asked my mom to make “Pickle Steak” when I came home to visit. I now frequently make the recipe for my own family. However, one day I was in the mood to make the recipe but did not have the top round steaks needed. I did, however, have stew beef! So, I created the Pickle Steak Stew! It tastes exactly like the original recipe without taking the time to roll the steaks and vegetables hence the nickname lazy beef rouladen. It’s incredible comfort food, and it freezes well too. I hope you enjoy it!

You may like to “put de lime in de coconut” or “pina coladas in the rain”, but these two products (pictured below), while both made from the flesh of the coconut, are NOT the same.

2 tbsp canola oil 12 oz package original breakfast sausage links 4 green onions chopped with white and green portions separated 8 oz portabella mushrooms, sliced 1-pint cherry tomatoes, halved 1 tsp dried thyme or 1 tbsp fresh thyme ½ tsp salt 3 cups water 1 cup milk 1 cup grits (white or yellow) ¼ cup butter 4 oz shredded cheddar cheese Heat oil in a large sauté pan. Add sausage links and cook until browned and thoroughly cooked. Remove sausage and keep warm. In the same pan used to cook sausage, add the white portion of the chopped green onion and mushrooms. Sauté until tender. Add tomatoes, thyme and salt and sauté until the tomatoes are tender. Add sausage back to the pan and gently stir to evenly heat.

October has rolled in, and with it comes National Apple and Cranberry Month. At this time of year, you may see more and more recipes prepared with apples or cranberries. Apples and cranberries can add color and a crisp taste to your salads, cooked dishes, baked goods, or beverages.

Salad:

Wild garlic (Allium vineale) is a winter, perennial weed that looks like a clump of blue-green grass. Native to Europe and east Asia, this weed is commonly found throughout the Southeast. It was brought to North America in soil used as ballast weight in sailboats. The dirt would be removed, and cargo would take its place on return journeys to Europe.

EVEN IF I WERE STARTING LEEKS AND ONIONS indoors from seed, two of the earliest things one might sow, it isn’t time yet here in Zone 5B. But if you live in a slightly warmer zone, or want to do a mental dress-rehearsal, I’ve assembled some of the seed-starting tips and tricks from around A Way to Garden, for easier reference. More to come as the time gets closer.Seed-Starting Basics: This one is what it sounds like, the basic countdown and gear and all the rest.

“I planted 3 A. giganteum bulbs in an area where a large spruce had recently been removed,” Elizabethsflowers wrote. “They came up last year, but didn’t seem happy—the leaves quickly turned brown, and the flowers weren’t too impressive. I think they might have been unhappy in that acidic soil. I meant to move them last fall, but forgot! Can I carefully move them now, before they bloom, or should I wait?” So what’s is the answer for alliums, and for other bulbs?MOVING ‘IN THE GREEN,’ OR NOT?I would not try to move alliums “in the green” (meaning when they are up and growing), I told Elizabethsflowers. The risk of breaking off the

FOR THE CHANCE to live in the garden, finally, after more than 20 years of back-and-forth weekending. Even nearly three years in to my “new” life, I awaken astonished every day, and remain transfixed by all its intricate goings-on. Were all these mammals, insects, reptiles, birds—not to mention the plants—really this busy doing fantastic things together all those years when I was absent?FOR FINALLY, after two prior winters of practice, having figured out the right long underwear and the right anti-skid winter footwear to sail through whatever gives. (No, I am not a spokesperson for either.) The question of the right warm slippers remains elusive.FOR A CELLAR full of garlic and potatoes (sweet and white) and onions and squash, and two freezers full of everything else I grew. With the joy of homegrown food—which sustains us both in the growing, the cooking

SOME PLANT ARE JUST CONTRARIANS. Bowiea volubilis, the so-called climbing onion, is one such creature, waking up when everybody’s asleep, even if you haven’t paid any attention in ages.

IWAS MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS HERE WHEN THIS SHOWED UP. And it continues to show up.

In the way that groupings of crocus or the smallish species (botanical) tulips add to the earlier springtime show, A. moly is that kind of plant: a bit of punctuation, an exclamation here and there when a group is placed strategically at the feet of something else.Of course, there was nothing strategic about my clump of A. moly and where it is placed. I suspect what I am growing is the cultivar ‘Jeannine,’ left over from a magazine shoot a few years ago, tucked in the area I use for cutting things and spare vegetables, nearly forgotten. I’m going to keep this cluster of bulbs right where it is for future happy little June bouquets, and add some more elsewhere. More good news about A. moly: We’re not talking $1 or more a bulb, but more like 100 for $20, so I can splurge without to

Described as cornflower blue in the catalogs and variously named, the blue ornamental onion in question stands a couple of feet tall, with flowerheads an inch and a half or 2 across. It blooms here just as spring turns to summer, and would probably be more prolific if I took it out of an area that I have to water in July and August and September, because it’s adjacent to vegetables, and let it live a little drier as it ripens.There are other blue alliums, as this Pacific Bulb Society article describes, but this is one that’s affordable, easy to get your hands on, and hardy in Zones 4-7.  A cheap thrill, really, for those seeking the sometimes-elusive color blue in the garden (you can bu

IAM WAITING, WATCHFULLY, FOR THE MOMENT–the garlic-harvest moment. Unlike its botanical cousin the onion, garlic doesn’t want to be left to go completely brown in the garden–but digging it too soon can diminish storage life as well.

FOR THOSE who cannot read one more headline of world despair or political madness, a recent “New York Times Magazine” story on what happens when combat veterans and damaged parrots connect is a certain antidote. A must-read:  Charles Siebert’s “What Does a Parrot Know about PTSD?”  (Photo of blue and gold macaws under Creative Commons license from Marcel Burkhard.)size-xl coyotes: woyote, coywolf, or what?THE OTHER NIGHT at a dinner, someone said that they’d seen a wolf in a local cornfield. No, I said, we don’t have wolves in the Northeast, but we do have really big coyotes (60ish pounds, rather than the “usual” 35 or 45). To refres

Yes, I am kidding—sort of. But what I mean is this: Producing the segments each week keeps me ferreting out answers to questions I have, in journalistic style—reaching out to possible expert source for some answers. I learn so much, all of which I then get to share. Win-win. (Some of the year’s top topics are listed below.)The show, which begins its seventh year in March 2016, has been named a top-5 gardening podcast by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK (alongsid

What do you want (need?) to know about seeds?Do you experience failure with some particular crop, like spindly seedlings or poor germination, or need help with a better lighting set-up or watering method or something technical like that? What’s the craziest thing you ever grew—or wanted to grow but didn’t dare? Your biggest win—or to

Sweet pickles are popular in the summer, and this recipe will keep you coming back for more.

If you've already finished the stellar second season of FX's The Bear, you might be feeling a little disappointed that you won't be able to listen to Carmy (played by Jeremy Allen White) and his team yell «Yes, chef!» and «Behind!» at each other anymore. But before you get too deep into that post-binge-watch slump, we have some good news: There's a new viral recipe from the show (remember the spaghetti from last year) that can give you a taste of what you're missing—and you're about to see tutorials for it nonstop.

If you are tired of pests attacking your favorite plants then follow these Natural Ways to Kill Aphids and get rid of them in no time!

Canning onions is a great way to keep them for longer and use them in your recipes year round.

As the spring flowering bulbs need pre-chilling, you should plant them in fall in a way that they get enough time of some weeks to establish their roots before freezing but not that enough that they’ll start to sprout.

Vegetables are planted every season but do you know there are some of them that are planted once and harvested many seasons? Here are the best Perennial Vegetables You Can Plant Once & Enjoy for Years!

Demand for allotments is at an all-time high, and it doesn’t seem to be wavering any time soon. With wait times as long as three or even four years (depending on the area), it’s likely that demand will remain high for a while. Allotments can be dated as far back as the early medieval period, according to The Natural Science and Media Museum.

Planning to grow something in your room for the colder months? Here are the Best Indoor Herbs that Can Thrive on Winter Windowsill!

When we hear ‘spiders’ it makes us go uncomfortable, as most of us don’t like to have them around in our homes. The good news is, you can grow Plants that Repel Spiders and get rid of them, without using any chemical approach that does more harm than good!

These Fruits that Stink and Smell can put some people off with their pungent and strong odor. However, despite their smell, these fruits are popular for their unique flavors and health benefits!