frozen onion
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
We ran out of green onion the other morning, and had to eat our natto donburi without that lovely condiment. Naturally, I didn't want to go another day. But my actions turned it into three days.
That afternoon, I bought some big ripe green onions, fat juicy things as large as I'd ever seen. I brought them home and promptly put them in the freezer.
Instead of the fridge.
The next morning, Mari discovered the frozen onion and asked why*. I was humbled to discover what I'd done and we moved the onion to the fridge. I warned that it might get soft....
And I was right. The next morning I found some disgustingly soft veggie-ruins where the green onion had been: slimey, dripping, soft and degenerate. I tried pulling the stuff—still in its wrapper, which I think was the real problem—out of the fridge. But instead of coming along nicely it flopped wetly halfway out of the bag and let loose a torrent of yellish water. "Water".
Appalled, I threw out the ruined onion and decided to use a leek I'd spotted in the fridge. Cleaning the yellowish onion-water off of the leek, I chopped up some leek for our breakfast and put the rest away.
In the freezer.
Where tonight my darling wife found it and asked why.
*As George Carlin once explained, some people see what is and ask "why?" Some people see what never was, and ask, "why not?" And some people have to go to work and don't have time for that shit. I guess I've been a bit distracted with my project, of late.