When an onion is not an onion or a Vidalia...

Cooking breakfast this morning, and it is not unusual to stir fry various kinds of things in the pan before the scrambled eggs are dropped on top, I sampled once again the incredibly sweet onions we buy here at the local markets.  Several times RA and I have discussed how sweet these onions are.  We have always been consumers of Vidalias and Walla Walla onions whenever possible and would buy them at any opportunity. Sometimes this would be around the Christmas season. The Shriners have sold bags of Vidalias nationwide in the past, something like 10 pounds for $10.00. It seems to me we have bought these at Christmas time but that should not be so.  The growing season in Georgia begins with a planting of these in November and then the harvest begins in April and goes through June. It is relatively short.  For some enterprising capitalists in the US that growing season was extended.

Vidalia Sweets

Not quite a decade ago a tractor trailer was being unloaded at a Georgia processor and amongst the cargo was $3.9 million worth of cocaine and heroin snuggled in among the bags of onions.  Seems the DEA traced this sweet cargo back to the point of origin and it was Peru. Of course a number of folks were asking what were Peruvian onions doing in Vidalia Georgia? That was the larger question not the smuggled drugs.

Certain counties in Georgia have been designated and given the right to market under the Vidalia onion name. The reason for the sweetness of these onions is due to the low sulfur in the soil.  Sulfuric acid is the active irritant when cutting the not so sweet onions as the vapors mix with the fluid around the eye producing the acid.  The dry deserts of Peru turns out are also sulfur free so they make fertile beds for the world's sweetest onion, maybe the Vidalia or maybe the Peruvian Gold. Seeds were brought here some time ago and planted with astonishing success. So difficult is it to tell the difference that executives of Del Monte were given a whopping $3 million dollar fine for bagging Peruvian Golds into Vidalia Sweets bags and selling them. Ultimately the fine was reduced to $100,000.00 and a temporary suspension of business in Georgia packaging these counterfeit onions.

In the mean time we will continue to enjoy these Peruvian Golds until their season ends. I wonder... will the Peruvian sweet onion be extended by importing Vidalias? What will we do?

Peruvian Golds

One recipe we have not tried is to cut the center of the onion out and stuff it with a mixture of butter, ground beef and garlic, wrap it in tin foil and then bake it in the oven or put it on the grill. Until then we will continue to enjoy these sweet onions in our huevos con cebollas and I will enjoy eating them raw, somewhat to RA's annoyance.