Sweetness Comes

The best things in life happen slowly and develop their own personality over time, a posteriori, the philosophers would say, reflecting on the experiences they’ve earned. Learn how to throw clay. Eventually, you’ll make something you can drink out of and you can call yourself a potter. Keep hammering away at your keyboard, and when you have enough good material, you’ll be known as a writer. See the same guy for a year and a half, and when your toothbrush is at his house and there’s Hanes in your dresser drawer, you’ll be in a relationship together, and it will be all the more true because you let it define itself over time.

Some things in life you have to be patient enough to learn and curious enough to discover. Definitions aren’t granted, they’re earned. Those who know me well will recognize this as my philosophy on relationships.

The St. Germain is at his house, but the Parmesan is at mine. The privacy and big-screen TV are at his house, but our home-grown, ripening tomato plants are at mine. This weekend, he’s out of town, and unfortunately, the Pinot Grigio and homemade baba ghanoush are at his house, and there’s little good food at mine. If T.S. Eliot measured out his life with coffee spoons, B and I might measure out our life in ingredients and tell time by the recipes we’ve made.

Earlier today, I noticed he left a bag full onions from the farmer’s market here at my place. As if by some ingrained habit I didn’t know I have, I decided to make onion butter. I’d done it before and figured it was no mystery, but looking through my cookbooks from Stewart to Escoffier, I found no mention of it.

If you look online, you’ll see plenty of recipes masquerading as onion butter. The problem is, they all instruct you on how to mix onions and butter together, but that’s not the point at all. The idea is to make a creamy spread out of onions and onions alone.

And then I remembered: The Angelica Home Kitchen by Leslie McEachern. This is where I learned how to make onion butter. I pulled out the cookbook and found a “recipe” on page 171.

Onion Butter. Peel and thinly slice 3 pounds of onions. Cook over a low flame for 3 to 4 hours. When they’re “completely melted into a dark caramelized mass,” puree until smooth in a food processor.

So that’s what you get when you’re patient. A smooth, sweet spread that turns ordinary bread and cheese into something unusual and sweet, just like my life with B.