February 25, 2021
It’s official! The Outdoor Farmers’ Market opens for the season on Saturday, April 3rd, Easter Weekend! We absolutely cannot wait for another fantastic season! ☀️🌸💐🌺👩🌾
What are you most excited for!? We can’t decide between sunny Saturdays, fresh produce, community spirit, or delicious treats!
Only 37 days to go. The countdown begins!
Everyone in the Indoor Market is back open! You heard that right. Every Saturday from 8AM to 6PM, come down and meet our tenants! Here’s a link to our Market Directory.
The Ice Rink is also open, so make sure to take advantage before the ice melts! Did you know it’s only 23 days until Spring?
It seems like everywhere I look right now, there are farmers putting thousands of onion seeds into trays, ready to nurture them into full bulbs. Onions are probably one of the most widely used vegetables around and I’m pretty sure I use an onion in my cooking every day!
That probably means we know everything about them, right? Well, maybe not! For yesterday’s “What’s That Veg Wednesday,” we compiled some facts you might find interesting!
If you’re looking for the nitty gritty, head here.
Within a few moments of cutting open an onion, our eyes begin to water. Sometimes, it’s just a mild irritation and other times, it’s a full-on cry fest! But why?
These tears aren’t emotional, they’re reflexive. When something like dust or smoke triggers nerve endings in the cornea, it tells your brain that there is an irritation in your eye. This alerts your eye (the lachrymal gland) to make tears to flush away the invader.
What’s the invader? Well, it goes all the way back to the soil! Onions absorb the sulfur in the earth as they grow which develops amino acid sulfoxides, if you want to get technical. This acid is drawn to a water source, your tears, and causes the reaction. Different varieties of onions will release more of less of this acid and cause more or less tears. And, the more you cook with onions, the more resistant you’ll be to their ~wiles~. You can read lots more about that here.
Onions bring a lot to a dish…including some gas! They contain a natural sugar called fructose and during digestion, bacteria in your gut flock to the fructose and do their best to break them down; this process can create gas! This is similar to garlic, artichokes and other foods.
You might think that Spring Onions, Green Onions and Scallions are all just names for the same thing, and since people use the names interchangeably and the vegetables look pretty similar, the confusion makes A LOT of sense. A lot. Especially since different countries refer to the vegetables as different things.
We’re going to use the image to explain!
Left: These don’t produce a bulb and aren’t meant to. The base has the same width stem all around and the greens are softer and often used as garnishes for dishes.
Right: These have a small bulb and can look like any variety of onion as they are simply onions harvested before they are fully grown. They have softer and milder bulbs, but tougher greens that aren’t usually used as garnishes. The greens are great in stews however, and the bulbs taste wonderful roasted.
In the United States, Scallions and Green Onions are two names for the same thing, the veg on the left; however, Spring Onions refer to the veg on the right. In Canada, we adopt a lot of customs/words from the U.S.A, Europe, and plenty of other countries and continents. It’s common in Canada to refer to straight green onions, the veg on the left, as Spring Onions, but perhaps equally as common to use the U.S.A.’s terminology.
Ultimately, as long as you can tell the two apart by appearance and know how to cook with them, you’re set!
1. Did you know that in the Middle Ages, onions were an acceptable form of currency and were used to pay for rent, goods and services – and even as gifts!? I just might try that for the next family birthday…
2. Apparently, if you’ve got cold feet, an onion is the answer! Some people claim that rubbing an onion on freezing toes is all you need to get the circulation going again. Give that a try and let us know!
3. According to The Guinness Book of World Records, the biggest onion ever was grown by British farmer Peter Glazebrook, who harvested a monster-sized onion in 2011 that weighed just under 18 pounds. It’s pictured here.
