By Jan Jackson –
SALEM – Ore. – One Pan Annie thinks we need to pay more attention to onions. She doesn’t think snipping some tiny green ones into a salad, adding a big slice or two to a hamburger or chopping some into a potato salad is using them enough. In the upcoming cookbook she’s writing (“One Pan Annie Cooks for One”), she says if you are one of those who only think of onions as a condiment, you need to change your thinking.
How can this be happening to a vegetable that can be so easily baked, boiled, grilled, fried, roasted or sautéed? Annie can’t figure it out either.
“Onions are cheap to buy, healthy to eat and easy to fix,” she says. “They are delicious in their own right and should appear as a major vegetable on your plate.” (See nutrition figures below)
History
Originally from Asia (though some say Iran and West Pakistan), onions have been around for 5,000 years. In the United States, they make up the third largest fresh vegetable industry. They grow from California to Washington and Georgia to New York. Oregon ranks them below blueberries and but above Christmas trees. Source: (Capital Press )
Trivia
- Libya boasts the highest per capita consumptions of onions (66.8 pounds per person per year compared to about 22 pounds in the United States)
- A single serving of onion contains 45 calories
- Onions come in yellow, red and white
- New York called themselves “The Big Onion” before they changed to the “Big Apple”
- In the Middle Ages, the three main vegetables of European cuisine were beans, cabbage and onions and onions were prescribed to alleviate headaches snakebites and hair loss.
Annie’s Advice
One Pan Annie suggests keeping onions on hand and cooking them as you would cook any other vegetable. Proud of her self-proclaimed ‘laziest cook in the world status’, she says all you have to do is simply peel away the dry outer layer, cut off the ends, quarter them and throw them in the pan with the meat.
The next time someone says, do you want onions with that, do what Annie does and turn it around. Just say, you’d like a little hamburger with those onions.
For One Pan Annie’s story, visit One Pan Annie
Photo by Jan Jackson
One Pan Annie’s pan of choice
Nutrition
• High in vitamin C.
• A good source of fiber.
• Only 64 calories per one-cup serving.
• Sodium, fat, and cholesterol free.
One Pan Annie Cooks for One
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