Onion Soup For Onion Haters

A WORD PROBLEM: You have married a good man. A man you love and who loves you back. You have committed yourselves to each other before God, and vowed to love and cherish each other for the rest of your days on this earth. This good and loving man hates onions. One day you come across a tasty sounding recipe for Five Onion Soup and think what great thing it would be to make for dinner. You set about making shopping lists and gathering the ingredients you will need. Are you:

a) Trying to lovingly guide him past his unreasonable dislike of a flavorful vegetable by preparing it in new and interesting ways?

b) Scatter-brained and forgetful? Or are those the same thing?

c) Counting on the fact that he won't want any of this delicious soup so you can have it all to yourself?

d) Just plain confused about why you do some of things you do, but feel that anything is better than being predictable, and besides, a blog is cheaper than therapy?

e) All of the above.
The road to self-discovery can be under heavy construction at times. I try not to let it throw me. Instead, I make something good to eat. If the Hubs really doesn't like it, I'll add cheese. And bacon (or sausage). That's what I did with this soup. Oh, and the homemade sourdough bread alongside it also went a long way toward smoothing his onion-hating feathers. All in all, he said it wasn't one of his favorite soups... but that it wasn't bad. And he cleaned his plate. I can live with that.

• I made Jennifer's Five Onion Soup from the Palate To Pen blog (that I first read about on What Katie Ate).

My Notes: I used "Better Than Bouillion" instead of the dry kind. Added scallions, sliced thinly (why not make it a Six Onion Soup, right?). Simmered for close to an hour. Next time, I would caramelize the onions more, use chicken stock instead of water, and increase the amount of garlic, garlic powder, pepper flakes and salt. Served with shaved Romano cheese stirred in and added a little more salt and ground pepper to taste. Topped with crumbled bacon (sausage would also taste good).  

• The Whole Foods Cookbook (2002) has a Roasted Three-Onion Stock recipe on page 61 that looks like a good way to use up extra onions and beef up winter soups.
• There is a Six-Onion Soup in the Silver Palate Cookbook that looks like it might be good also. (Rosso & Lukins/page 229 in the 25th Anniversary edition)

Word Problem Answer: This is one of those trick questions where everyone has to answer it for themselves. For me, I would have to say that it's probably (b)... but I will tell the Hubs that it's (a)... then take (c) as my consolation... wondering if it really is (d)... which I guess points firmly to... (e).