No skydiving, onions for this fella

There are three things I will never do, and I’ve had many opportunities to do all of them.

(1). I will never fly with the Canadian Forces Snowbirds.

(2). I will never jump out of a perfectly good airplane with the Skyhawks Parachute Team. (3). I will never eat onions. My dad didn’t like vegetables, so my mom had little chance of getting her six kids to.

She was a great cook but more like a short order cook because I wouldn’t eat onions, neither of my sisters would eat broccoli and one of my brothers wouldn’t eat cheese.

Picture our oven when mom was making macaroni and cheese. One huge mac-and-cheese for the seven of us and one small mac-and-no-cheese for Frank.

I always say that much of what I learned was at the dinner table.

Eight of us sat around that table three times every day.

Here, in the West, it’s breakfast, lunch and dinner but in the Merry-times it’s breakfast, dinner and supper. — at least it was when I was growing up.

Breakfast was at 8 a.m., dinner was noon and supper was 5 p.m.

When I met my wife, who grew up in Victoria, she was stunned that I wanted to eat at 5 o’clock. It took her awhile, but she weaned me off that. We eat supper about 7:15 p.m. and I’m quite used to it now.

But whatever time we eat, there are no onions on my plate.

I don’t and, now, can’t get close to an onion. Carol used to try and trick me with onion powder, but I am so much smarter than that.

And I empathize with how challenging it is to cook for someone like me. I give her big points. But that’s as far as I can take it.

People ask me if it’s the taste, the smell, the consistency? It’s all those, and more.

Not to mention many years of habit. I love the foods I like and she’s got me eating more vegetables than I would ever have thought, but no onions. I am a “comfort food”kind of guy.

Hey, who wouldn’t want to live with a fellow who hates onions and can’t pick out his own clothes? High maintenance? Get outta here.

Fred Trainor is a retired broadcaster living in Okanagan Falls. Email: fredtrainor@shaw.ca.