Friday, 7 September 2012

Andrea's Verse and Pickled Onions.

One day in Kingsport, Tennessee
A lady came and said to me
‘They call me Peanut, don’t you see,
Because I’m only five foot three.’

You can sing it to the tune of Belle of Belfast City, if you like. Which reminds me: I still haven’t got a Liam Clancy cap. I don’t think they sell them in Ashbourne.

Which further reminds me – because I have a strange brain that makes odd connections – that I sometimes get the urge to gorge on cheese and pickled onions. Like five minutes ago.

I knew an actress once who could devour a whole jar, or sometimes even two, of pickled onions at a single sitting. Her name was Sarah and she was Jewish. She had big, brown, warm, womanly eyes, and also a disarming predilection for holding people’s hands without warning. She did it to me on one occasion when I encountered her at a railway station. I enlisted my mother’s help in attempting to bribe the cow-eyed Sarah into coming up and seeing my etchings. My mother used to pickle her own onions, you see, and she gave me jar after jar to pass on to mistress S. It was all to no avail; Sarah wasn’t biting. Well, apart from the pickled onions, that is. I gather she eventually married somebody rich and now lives in Manhattan. Can you get pickled onions in Manhattan? That’s a serious question.

My own craving for a pickled onion has gone beyond the point of self-denial and I’m bored. There’s something curiously irritating about Fridays when you don’t do a regular job.

4 comments:

andrea kiss said...

:) Thanks for the verse. Nice to have a smile before bed!

Now i'd like to have a pickled onion. I don't think i've ever had one, but i do love onions.

Ever had boiled peanuts?

JJ said...

Pickled onions are very popular over here - mostly eaten with salads but some people like them with chips. To make them, you need the right sort of onions (a small variety) and the right sort of pickling vinegar. It's probably cheaper to buy them in jars.

No, I didn't know you could boil peanuts. Don't they go soft?

andrea kiss said...

I wonder if what you're calling pickled onions are what we call scallions? If so, i've had them and they're so good...

Boiled peanuts are soft and so gross. I've seen people eat them out of cans they look disgusting. All watery and blah. I'd never seen them before in my life until i moved to Georgia where people eat a lot of them as well as a lot of bbq sandwiches and Brunswick Stew. The joke there is that no one knows what Brunswick Stew is, what's in it, but they eat it anyway. It looks like cat vomit.

JJ said...

Scallions are what we call spring or salad onions, and are generally eaten raw with salads. Pickled onions are made using a more regular onion with a small, round bulb. They're pickled in a special vinegar with additives (don't ask me what.) You can also get jars of 'mixed pickles' that usually consist of onions, gherkins and pieces of cauliflower.

I think I'll avoid Georgia. And Brunswick, come to that.