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Onions

Onions

– Fiction by Sarah Munn –

Homemade Insanity

“Every good dish starts with sautéed onions,” my mother used to say. It was a maxim she followed in her home kitchen and it seemed to be true, because everything she made with sautéed onions was delicious. Her spaghetti sauce, her tacos, her meatloaf, her soups, her casseroles, her gravy. There were even a few good dishes that technically didn’t start with sautéed onions, but they were made all the better for them. Like pan-seared pork chops or a burger – top them with sautéed onions and you’ll never want them any other way.

My mother used them so often that she sautéed them up in batches—five or six onions at a time, every Sunday night—and kept them in a glass container in the fridge to use throughout the week’s meals.

When I first left home, she sautéed an extra batch and gave it to me in my own glass container. “For your fridge,” she’d said, as I gave her a hug.

I didn’t cook much in my college dorm room, having only a hot plate to work with. But I added my mother’s onions to everything – scrambled eggs, stir fry, ramen noodles, even mac and cheese. On lazy days, I would put them in sandwiches with ham and cheese and mustard. They were sweet and salty, diced small and cooked down slowly to a translucent caramel brown, and they tasted like home. Every time I visited, my mother replenished my onion supply with a new batch, sometimes two. “I’ll have to teach you to make them yourself one day,” she would say, laughing as she pressed another glass container into my hands.

“One day” had never come. Through two years of college and another couple years of adulthood, I had relied on her steady supply. We always planned to do a cooking lesson “one day” and always ended up chatting or doing other things instead. Now, she’s been gone for almost a week, and I am on my last spoonful of onions.
I’ve warmed them up and I’m eating them right off the spoon because I don’t want this last piece of my mother adulterated by any other flavours. I wish I had her recipe for them, but no one in the family knows where she may have kept it, or if she even ever wrote it down. She made these onions so often she did it from memory.

I lick a little more off the spoon, carefully rationing what’s left, and imagine my mother’s deft hands peeling the onions, then chopping them, then stirring them with a wooden spoon in her huge cast iron skillet. She would have made this batch mere days before she died. I’ve seen her do this so many times, but I can’t remember the finer details. What kind of onions did she use? Did it matter? Did she use soy sauce? There was always something in a brown bottle next to the stovetop. Were there spices? Or just salt and pepper? She always said it was so simple. I hope it is.

On my kitchen counter there is a yellow onion, a white onion, and a sweet onion, in a plastic grocery bag. I bought them this morning in a burst of productive grief because I suddenly had become determined to figure out how to make my mother’s sautéed onions. I can’t remember ever buying onions from the grocery store myself – I’ve always used Mom’s in anything I’ve cooked. But if I can make them like she did, maybe I’ll be able to bear life without my mother in it. Maybe.

I lick the spoon again. I pull out a cutting board and a knife.

I’m here, Mom, I think, wondering if there’s any way her spirit can hear me. Show me.

I pick up one of the onions and begin.

About the Author – Sarah Munn

Sarah Munn is a writer and editor based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Of Jamaican and Canadian heritage, Sarah grew up in Micronesia and the Caribbean as a third-culture kid. With two chefs for parents, she often incorporates food and flavour in her work. She has been published in 805 Lit + Art, Blue Moon Literary & Art Review, Five Minute Lit, and Sad Girl Diaries. She also shortlisted in the Federation of BC Writers 2023 Literary Contest for Short Fiction. Sarah can be found at sarahmunncreates.com and on Instagram @sarahmunn_author.

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