Who Needs Pepper Spray When There's Onion Juice?

Sunday night, I set out to chop the sweet walla walla onions I bought at the farmer's market Saturday morning. I had purchased a 5-lb. bag, which was about 7 good-sized onions. I purchased a "comfort" onion chopper from Bed, Bath & Beyond for $7.99 (it was $9.99 regularly and I had a 20%-off coupon), which I planned to use for my onion endeavor. The chopper worked beautifully...but only if you chopped, turned it about 1/4 of the way and chopped some more, turned it 1/4 and chopped again, until you made your way back to the starting point. Otherwise, I ended up with big chunks of onion.

My goal, of course, was to chop a bunch of onion and freeze it so 1) the onions wouldn't spoil before I could use them, and 2) so when I cook with them, all I have to do is take a package out and dump them in the recipe. It was supposed to be easy: clean and skin the onions; cut them into quarters; chop, bag, and freeze them.

I didn't factor in the part where, midway through the chopping, I have to go sit in the living room and do other things for an hour while my eyeballs stop burning and tearing.

After recovering, I dutifully marched myself back into the kitchen and, despite the return of onion tears, began chopping again, determined not to take a recovery break until I was finished. I made it (barely) and ended up with 12 1-cup packages of chopped onion for my trouble.

Before I could get the bags sealed, however, hubby came up the stairs, his eyes burning. Apparently the onion juice had entered the humidity-thick atmosphere of our home and moseyed on downstairs to where David was working. Hubby set about fumigating the place and I lit a candle, finished bagging the onions, and cleaned.

All I can say is . . . wow. Those were some powerful onions. Who needs mace or pepper spray when you could just dash some walla walla onion juice in the eyes?

I've also been wondering what to do with the huge zucchini--you know, the ones that somehow miss getting picked or that mutate overnight into zucchini giganticus. The seeds in the center are far too big to shred or to saute. I settled on removing the seeds and chopping up the rest for use in winter soup or a stir fry. One giganticus = 12 cups of chopped zucchini, so I figure I've got about a gross more cups to chop. And that's assuming I can stay on top of the rest of the incoming zucchini (thank goodness it looks like the plants are finally slowing down!) and keep them from mutating.