I realized just how many onions we’ve been using lately. Rather than buying the 12oz bag of chopped frozen onions for $1.00 at Giant, I considered buying onions in bulk to chop myself. Wegmans has a 10 pound bag of onions for $6.99. I could use my mini food processor to dice them two or three at a time while I made dinner. “Easy!”, I thought.
As the tears poured down my face and my eyes burned so bad that I thought I was doing permanent damage, My husband kept saying “Are you OK? This doesn’t look like a good idea”. Then, when I noticed my 17 month old son rubbing his eyes on the floor next to me, I realized that I actually have limits to frugality. In total, It took me about 15 minutes to chop and package those onions to freeze. Those 15 minutes felt like about 10 hours and I still feel like all I can smell is onions when I walk through the kitchen.
At the end of the day, I saved $5.81 for enough onions that will likely last me through three months. While a savings of 54% is pretty impressive on a whole food, it wasn’t enough to endure the noxious fumes that plague me to this day. At the end of a year, I would have saved $24.
We’ll just live recklessly and buy the frozen chopped onions, ’cause you know, we’re extravagant like that:)
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I love minced dried onions! I use them in so many recipes (and weirdly on pizza). They sell a spice jar of them for $1.00 at Aldi, but with the size, Costco was likely cheaper.
This all the way! I’m in the US and have never even heard of frozen pre-chopped onions. Granted I grew up in a house hold that cooked from scratch with whole food, so I never even though of another way. I probably chop an onion or garlic for dinner every single night, and it takes me maybe 2 minutes.
Also If you light a candle near your work space it helps to remove the oils in the air that make you teary.
Good idea JC! I’ve now decided that whole onions are the way to go. (Which you already knew!)