Have you seen these little guys at your farmer’s market or grocery store this year?  Have you been wondering what this cuteness is called?  These squooshed looking little onions are called Cipollini onions, pronounced Chip-o-lee-knee.  These cute little onions have the same psychological pull on me that leggy, gangly baby giraffes have on me.  You know, they’re adorable and fun to look at and you just wonder how they’re able to do all that they can do.

Roasted Cipollini onions make the perfect vegetable side dish for roasted meats.  Sure, cooked onions always make nice dinner companions for meat, but there’s something in the sweetness of these onions that works so well with meats.  Yes, Cipollini onions are a sweeter onion to begin with (than your typical red or brown onion) so when you oven or pan roast them, you bring out even more of their sweetness.  Even those who typically don’t like onions, will like the Cipollini’s because they don’t have that “bite” that other onions have.

They also make such a great vegetable side dish because of their small size.  You don’t have to do a lot of cutting or chopping to get this vegetable to fit on the plate.  There is one little catch to using these onions though (you had to know there would be something).  Cipollini onions can be a bitch to peel.  Their skin is very thin and fragile.  But there is a workaround for this challenge.  Blanch them.  Place the onions in a heat safe bowl.  Boil enough water to cover the onions.  Once the water boils, remove it from the heat and pour it over the onions.  Let them sit in the water for 5 minutes.  Pour of the water and let the onions cool enough to be handled.  Trim the root end (without cutting into much of the onion itself) and peel.  You may need to slip the tip of your knife under the skin to remove some of it.  For the tops, just twist and pull the skin (no cutting required).

I made a version of Tyler Florence’s Balsamic vinegar and honey roasted Cipollini onions to go along with a roasted chicken and green salad.  When I plated everything up, I felt like June Cleaver.  If I had been wearing a dress, with my hair perfectly coiffed, a frilly apron and sensible heels it would have been a perfect scene.  Craig came into the kitchen as I whirled around with his plate and sported shorts, a t-shirt and UGGs.  Truth be told…I could have been standing there naked and he still wouldn’t have seen past that plate of chicken and Cipollini’s.  I’m going to try that some night and test out this theory.  Of course, I’ll report back with the results.

Relationship Advice

Maybe our mothers were right <insert shudder here>.  Remember when they would harp on us saying “why would they buy the cow when they’re getting the milk for free?”  Forget the utter (not udder) resentment for one half of your parental unit calling you a cow.  But now science has come out on her side.

According to the study, couples who had sex the earliest, meaning on the first date or within the first month, had the worse outcomes.

“What seems to happen is that if couples become sexual too early, this very rewarding area of the relationship overwhelms good decision-making and keeps couples in a relationship that might not be the best for them in the long-run.”

Let me translate that for you…basically, your hormones run amok and you can’t think straight if you get your rocks off before you know anything more about each other than boob and boner size.

Participants were all in their first marriages and asked a series of communication related questions, in conjunction with the “how soon did you do it” question.  The findings showed that communication with each other was better and the satisfaction with the relationship was higher in the pairings that waited longer than those who had jumped in the sack earlier.

All of this makes perfect sense to me if you’re looking for a long term relationship.  You should at least know the person’s first and last name before you start sharing body parts and fluids.  But if you’re not looking for Mr. Right…just Mr. Rightnow you can toss all this out the fast moving car’s window.

(LiveScience)

Welcome to My Man's Belly! Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about the site or if there's a recipe you'd like to see here. Have a great day.

6 comments

• Tweet
• Pin It