Caramelized Onions

True confession:  my diet this summer was not the best.  I think I ate more pizza in 3 months than I ate the entire rest of the year combined.   We spent a lot of evenings at the pool which meant packing food for dinner, and the choices for portable food are somewhat limited.  So when September rolled around and the new school year started I resolved to get back in the kitchen more and resume my previously successful use of meal planning.  One of the first things I did was to make and freeze some staples that I can use on busy evenings.  I have been wanting to try making caramelized onions in my crock pot ever since I heard of the concept ten years ago but I've just never done it.

I started with a 5-pound bag of yellow onions.  I peeled and halved them (lengthwise).  A little tip to make onion slicing easier is to leave the root end of the onion in place to use as a handle until the slicing is complete.  Slice your onions up into a big pile of half-moons.

Place all of the onions in your crockpot and drizzle on some olive oil.

Cover and cook on low.  About 12 hours later add salt to taste and you will have a lovely batch of caramelized onions to add to your culinary creations.

I packaged mine in little plastic containers for the freezer.  Make sure you label and date your containers.  Couldn't be much simpler.

Pictures of my new dress coming soon.  I'll be wearing it tomorrow night for a special dinner out with my lovey and will post some pics and details after that.

Gazpacho: Using Nature's Bounty

That picture alone should be enough.  But for those who want a bit more detail, here it is.  A few weeks ago I had the best gazpacho I’ve ever had from my local coffee shop/bakery.  It had a fantastic smoky flavor that I thought was smoked paprika, but turned out to be smoked peppers.  I decided to try my hand at a version at home using smoked paprika.  The coffee shop version was a little too spicy for my taste (though I couldn’t stop eating it anyway) and I reasoned that with a combination of the hot and sweet smoked paprika I could obtain a less hot but still smoky tasting soup.

Most recipes call for similar ingredients with some variation on the seasonings.  In the picture above you can see what I used in mine.  I decided to forgo the bell peppers (for reasons involving my digestive tract which you really don’t need to know about) called for in most versions.  I didn’t measure anything.  The vegetables, tomato juice and bread went into the blender in batches.  The resulting concoction did not look or taste very appealing straight out of the blender.  Adding copious amounts of sweet and hot smoked pepper, salt, pepper and sherry vinegar helped immensely.  In the end I added some cumin as well.  This made two quarts which I plan to begin enjoying tomorrow after the flavors have had a chance to meld a bit in the fridge.  With summer produce at its height, now is the time to enjoy some of this cool and refreshing soup.  Enjoy!