Chopping Onions
Perceived Value
Chopping Onions
We all have tasks we despise doing because of the difficulty and unhappiness they bring us. Sometimes, maybe it’s best to consider other options to make certain tasks not so despicable in the long term. Maybe the best value is found in considering the quality of life that doing things differently may bring.
Chopping onions has become the bane of my existence. It makes my soul cry. But we eat a lot of onions. So I am doomed.
Okay, maybe I’m being a bit melodramatic, but I really don’t like chopping onions.
The alternative I suggested was to buy the already diced onions from the grocery store. My husband balked at the expense of that, claiming he would chop the onions instead of me. Yeah, right. His hands are worse than mine.
“LIFE CHANGING!”
Dicing onions with a knife was a source of chronic frustration, and becoming ineffective. Because I was no longer going to keep doing it the “old”way, there was a choice to make-either eliminate the use of onions, or find a new way. My solution to excluding onions altogether, then, was the purchase of the food chopper.
Pictured is the food chopper I bought, which happens to be from Pampered Chef. No, I’m not trying to sell you on purchasing from Pampered Chef. Although, I do like the many products I have acquired from them, this is not a promotion. This is an article about the cost of a product compared to its ability to enhance one’s quality of life. That’s how value is determined.
I am hesitant to buy plastic products due to the negative environmental impacts, but also because the quality of the product is often poor. I must say, this particular chopper is easy to clean, and it’s held up well to regular use and abuse. I even dropped it on my hardwood floor, and it didn’t show so much as a crack! I still have to slice the ends off the onion, remove the skin and cut it in half before placing it in the chopper, but it’s many times better than the slice-n-dice by hand and knife.
Now, and I don’t think I can emphasize the distress of this enough, instead of crying over the task of dicing up one onion as needed in a recipe, I can do a whole bunch at once ahead of time. I can chop them, and store them in the refrigerator to use as needed. This not only saves time and heartbreak, it also saves me from shedding tears. I love eating onions! But despise having to prepare them. Also, my hands don’t work as well as they used to, suffering from age and disability, so the onion chopper saves my frustration from asserting itself when my hands wish to not cooperate. I say that’s a win-win for me, as well as for anyone present to witness the cursed event.
It saves me emotional energy, as I don’t have to despair over the headache-causing event that comes with the decision to chop and add one lonely onion to a recipe. I can just happily open my container of already prepared onions, use what I need and put the container away until next time. I prefer to chop up as much as I anticipate we’ll use in the week ahead, then do more chopping the following weekend.
So, just to reiterate, the benefits gained are time, energy and family relations. Often times, you really can’t put a price on that.
Thank you for reading! Have you acquired quality of life benefits to a point beyond comprehension by investing in a product you wondered about laying out the money towards?
About the Creator
KJ Aartila
Wife of a very tolerant husband and Mother of one teenage daughter in far northern Wisconsin with too many pets.
Reader insights
Outstanding
Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!
Top insights
On-point and relevant
Writing reflected the title & theme
Easy to read and follow
Well-structured & engaging content
Eye opening
Niche topic & fresh perspectives
Heartfelt and relatable
The story invoked strong personal emotions
Compelling and original writing
Creative use of language & vocab
Excellent storytelling
Original narrative & well developed characters
Expert insights and opinions
Arguments were carefully researched and presented
Masterful proofreading
Zero grammar & spelling mistakes
Keep reading
More stories from KJ Aartila and writers in Feast and other communities.
Beyond the Slogans
Beyond the Slogans I rarely eat processed food, as when I look at the ingredients, I cannot decipher what’s in the food product. My theory is that if I don’t know what an ingredient is, I probably don’t want it in my body. If it looks interesting, I can look up the information and any potential benefits I may wish to consider.
By KJ Aartila2 months ago in Feast
Comments (23)
Well Explained great work
Great article. Congratulations on the top story!
Onions are so delicious. Do I like the sulfur getting into my eyes? No. Do I love the flavor of onions especially when sautéed? Yes. I just ate some venison that I pulled out of the freezer and boiled in some water. While cooking the venison I chopped up two onions with my knife. Do I love chopping onions? That's a yesn't. I'm neither a yes or no on that specifically. I wished that my food blender could mince them up into a fine pulp for me. I think that would be a perfect way to add onions into ground beef. I do remember that I watched on food YouTuber prepare an onion by using a cheese grater. That looked fantastic. I'm also not a fan of buying a lot of plastic goods. I just bought a new can opener last night, and the darn thing broke. I'm ticked, especially cause I was trying to open two cans of beans, not just one.
Congrats on the top story! I so agree with you about things being worth the money when they help us have more time or more comfort or just contribute in a way to our overall emotional well being. It seems small but they add up. Very well done!
Congrats on the Top Story :) I was on the fence about choppers.... but I think you may have tipped the scales for me :)
Congratulations on your Top Story, Keila. And please, can I ship this food chopper from your country to Malaysia? I badly need this, considering I am a lazy guy, hahahahahahhahahahaha.
I watched a youtube video from Gordon Ramsey about how to chop onions more efficiently, and it was super helpful. Although somehow I still always manage to cut slightly through the root and release those noxious gases!! Maybe I should get a food chopper to save the tears. :)
Yay! A Top Story from Feast! I should get me one of those choppers for garlic 😄. Take my subscription and Congratulations!
Congratulations on Top Story!! 🥰🥰
First of all, thank you for acknowledging emotional energy. It's real and some people just don't get it. Next, I love this chopper thingy! It's life changing! And finally, congratulations on your Top Story!
First of all, thank you for acknowledging emotional energy. It's real and some people just don't get it. Next, I love this chopper thingy! It's life changing! And finally, congratulations on your Top Story!
Very Helpful hints. I also love onions and sometimes buy the frozen chopped ones. I just have to watch out for the inedible skin parts that sometimes find their way into the bag. Thanks for sharing.
Well Done!!! Congratulations too💖💕
Wonderful. Congrats on the Top Story.
Ahh love this Keila! So agree with you!! These really make the task easier! Congratulations on top story 😊
I have that chopper. It’s awesome
I chop onions throughout the week. And I found using certain chef tips helped a lot to make chopping by hand easy and efficient. Congratulations on Top Story!
Congratulations on your Top Story, excellent work
Congratulations on Top Story!!
I enjoyed this article, what a thoughtful read :) And I have the same chopper. I just got my 2nd one about a year ago, but I had the first one for like 15 years and it was still sharp but I'd busted a piece off. The other thing I use all the time is my air fryer. I don't think I could live without it anymore!
I liked this article it was a fun read though in full disclosure I like chopping onions lol.
We have loads of vegetables frozen over here. And we even started getting some bags of chopped onions in addition to fresh. My eldest is not a fan of chopping them, so it helps him when he wants to cook. Whereas my younger son is okay with chopping. I know I've said it before but I love you convey your thoughts and feelings in these pieces. I also appreciated the almost-poetic feel of the phrase "the slice-n-dice by hand and knife." very sneaky and very clever. I can't think any profoud ones at the moment. But getting an Amazon Echo was a gamechanger in a lot of ways for us. At first I thought "This is the daftest purchase ever" But, I lose count of the amount of times we use it to set alarms, set timers (for cooking), ask about the weather, the news, random facts and to listen to music. I even used it to tease my son because I made a super mushy love mix for my wife and I that has a super mushy title. I may actually write an article about that cos it's pretty funny. And the most recent, greatest thing I discovered is that you can check the syllable count of words through Alexa lol! Handy for my current endeavours! So yeah, it may have seemed like a ridiculous and frivilous thing, but it has given more back in terms of value than it cost initially. Thank you for another awesome piece. I would not be surprised if this is not a Top Story within a couple of days! Well done Keila!
I love this so much! I agree, sometimes it’s definitely beneficial to take shortcuts in certain areas (that don’t yield suffered results) so more than can be spent in more important areas. I recently had a similar “ah-hah” moment with onions 😅 I started just buying them chopped and frozen. I actually started just buying all my vegetables frozen 😅 I read that frozen vegatables have the same (sometimes even greater) nutritional value as fresh ones, and it has saved so. much. Time! 😀