onion ring leader

i've been thinking about onion rings. more specifically, how they are made. and even more specifically, how the onions are cut before they are deep fried.

as a matter of fact, i lost sleep over it saturday night. and it's not like i thought about it for a few minutes as i drifted off into a blissful rest; i just laid there, eyes wide open and thought and thought about it. a lot. for hours. like, i used extra eye cream the next morning (actually that's not true because i don't use eye cream. i have a two-fold theory about it. i just wanted the severity of my sleep loss to come across with the gravity that it is due).

to start, i will say that i do prefer onion rings to fries. but until last night, that was the extent of my mental meanderings on this thoughtful and deep fried bulbous vegetable.

i can't say exactly how my thoughts started, but i like to think about processes en generale - how one thing becomes something else, how many things come together to make something greater - have you ever watched a special on how brie is made? or how the US Mint works? it's amazing!!

so i've always assumed that onions were cut from top down, meaning, stem to root. but the dissonance developed when i realized that they are onion RINGS, indicating that they are circular, without disconnection. so when you slice, you would end up wasting the entire middle section of the onion bc you would have to cut through the the root, which is unedible in most parts of the world. but if you just cut the root off, they cease to be onion rings. they would be onion arches or onion semi-circles. that ain't right. . .

so after thinking on it for an inappropriately long period of time, i realized that they had to be cut on its side, in effect, avoiding the stem and root altogether AND having the best part of the onion fully surrendered for its trans fatty acid destiny.

it was a big big moment. sort of like when i realized at age 23 that mcdonald's didn't have an "a" between the "m" and the "c".