Monday, June 15, 2009

Crazy Onion Soup and My Relatives

A few years ago, when I first dug up the beds in which we now have the strawberries and raspberries, somebody gave me some "crazy onions" to plant for use as green onions -- like shallots. They grow like weeds, and as the plants mature, they produce heads that contain small bulblets and florets. Some of the bulblets have baby onions; the idea appears to be that the adult onion leaves fall over and the bulblets grow into new bunches of onions.

They are all over the raspberry patch now, and have grow up waist-high, with two and even three generations of onions on the same plant. I was thinking about simply tearing them out, since they are very strong flavored, and, as green onions, somewhat stringy at times.

I got this idea, this afternoon, however. The kiddles were arguing over the pickled garlic cloves in the pepper jar last time they were together, and I began to wonder if the crazy onion bulblets could be pickled like those little pearl onions people buy as appetizers. I went out and gathered as many as I could find, and started breaking the bulblets off and cleaning away the outer skins.

As I realized that I would not have much more than a quart of the little stinkers, I decided I would turn them into onion soup. They are sort of like matryoshka dolls in that you peel away one layer, and inside will be another bulblet, and you break that apart, and inside ... Yeah. These things would make onion soup. but not French onion soup. It would have to be Russian onion soup. Crazy Slavs.



My fingers stink from peeling onion bulblets. The soup was simple -- boiled onions, some beef bouillon, and a touch of salt. We shall consider the consequences later.

Ah, yes. Who Daddy me? Back on 1-5-09 I stated that I thought Geni.com could be a useful and fun idea, but I had some security concerns. Joonyah was of the opinion that putting family information on Geni.com was not too terrible a threat to personal security. I thunk about it, and he is prolly right. If I have the correct information, it is better that I put it there than to let somebody else put bad info up. This is especially the case when I think about the posts from some of the people reading this blog and asking for help in tracking down their roots.

So. I have filled in a bunch of other stuff on my tree. Corrected some stuff that John Hunyadi had wrong. Added information from the Hrubik Reunion booklet from 1984 (when there were a lot more of Dad's generation still around). I will be contacting some of our common tree dwellers with invitations to join Geni and take charge of their own branches. Steve Webel (Bob's boy, for those who know a little and might be interested in more) who is off in faraway China, has put HP and Bek in his tree, mis-spelling her name. Also Erwin and Emily Webel (who are in my tree as well, via my great-uncle, Pal Hrubik). I need to contact him to merge our trees. Also, Emmie (Pamer) Hill, in my tree (via Anna (Knab) Hill, my great-aunt), is the sister of George Pamer (in John Hunyadi's tree, via Dave and Barb), and he and I are going to have to work out how to do the merge (more like a loop maybe, since our trees are already merged). I know that some of Uncle Dan's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are interested in finding family also.

I have heard that everyone in the world has at least one common ancestor if you go back only eight generations. Playing with only four or five generations, I can almost believe it.

7 comments:

  1. I wanna know how the soup turned out. I've got a TON of those onions and need something to do with them!

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  2. Ask Mixy. As for me, my fingers still stink like onions 24 hours later.

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  3. Yum. Yum. Yum.
    And gassy.
    But it makes a great breakfast, or snack.
    Yum.
    Michelle

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  4. Grandpa Jim, I am having a hard time posting to this site, for whatever reason, my messages do not post, maybe they are too long - if you get this, please email me and I apologize, initially I had made a typo in my email address... my correct email is k_c34@ymail.com. I do hope to hear from you.

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  5. Sounds almost like inbreeding... You sure we ain't from West Virginia? -hp

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  6. East Virginia, boy. Henrico County. Careful how you talk about your kids' ancestors.

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  7. I'm pretty irritated with the stuff posted about me and my MINOR children on Geni. Misspellings, telling the whole world personal information that is none of somebody else's business to be posting, esp about MY MINOR children, innaccurate statements of birthplaces of my kids, etc.

    While I'm not one to sue, I could see many scenarios where this Geni outfit could be the target of a lawsuit by somebody else, esp considering they are backed by the deep pockets of Google. Hope they have lots of lawyers!

    Oh, and to whoever has posted information beyond NAMES about my family, I would appreciate it if that info were WIPED from the internet. Its called PRIVACY...

    hp

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