Vidalia Onions

So I called my friend Norm, an 80-year-old, white-ponytailed, earringed artist about whom I wrote an article in the Spring issue of Edible Atlanta, after I heard he had been hired by the Vidalia Onion Commission to do a painting. He came over yesterday to have blackberry/zucchini muffins and iced herbal tea with me in my garden and he brought the painting with him. How he ever captured so much sweetness, warmth and emotion in a painting about onions, I can't explain. I just want to sit on that blanket and take a bite out of those slices like an apple.

"Ya' want some onions? They sent me forty pounds to paint," Norm said, lugging a bag of the fat, flat, yellow beauties. Immediately thinking onion tart, onion soup, baked onions, I held out my hands. Who would turn down Vidalia onions?

Vidalia onions are grown in a production area regulated by law, sort of like Champagne and Parmesan cheese. They are grown in twenty south Georgia counties that include and surround Vidalia, Georgia and are sweet because of the varieties grown, the climate, and the low amount of sulfur in the soil in that area. Yes, when you eat a Vidalia onion, you experience definite "terroir," or taste of the land. Because of their unique characteristics, the Georgia-passed Vidalia Onion Act of 1986 issued a trademark to Vidalia onions.

Vidalia onions are good sources of vitamin C and potassium, and the perfect compliment in the pan to all those southern greens. Harvested from late-April through mid-June, vidalia onions are available in stores until December, but that involves that questionable controlled atmosphere storage technology. So now is the time to buy them.

As for Norm, I got to show him all my Dr-Seussian onion plants, their stalks tall, thick and bending to a rhythm only they hear and their round spheres of tiny white flowers towering high above their gardenmates like sentries. These humble, simple root vegetables are quite beautiful in the later stage of life. Not unlike people.

To see more of Norm's paintings, go to www.normcitron.com. To find out more about Vidalia onions, check out the official Vidalia onion website. Or check out at your local grocery store. With a bag of them.

One Local Summer Update:

Breakfast: Muffins baked with blackberries, the first of the zucchini, beet greens and amaranth leaves (the garden) and local, raw honey (Weeks Honey)

Lunch: Amaranth leaves (the garden) on my veggie burger, leftover frittata sandwiches from dinner last night in the lunchboxes

Dinner: Farrow (a delicious plump and nutty grain)(Anson Mills) with grated cheese (Sweet Grass Dairy) and various greens (the garden)

Iced herbal tea: blackberry leaves, lemon balm and mint (the garden)

Vidalia Onions