Regarding Onions: The crazy food that turns our tears into sulphuric acid. Somewhere along the way some twit must have had the following thought process.
“AARGH MY EYES IT BURNS I wonder what it tastes like”.
Somewhere in the houses of the first cities…
Ari was sick of her husband. He was cruel and vile, and rough with her in their bedchamber. He expected a cooked meal when he came home, expected it hot, but never told her when to expect him.
And he never gave her enough oil for her lamps, forcing her to do most of her work by feel.
He would not let her eat until he had eaten, which made the longer nights insufferable.
Therefore, her only recourse was to poison him.
She’d been gathering them all day. The root of the tassel grass was well known for its eye-burning smell when cut. It served reason that it had to be poisonous.
She’d peeled them and chopped them carefully, and now they were bubbling in the stew while she ate the bread she’d made that day. Let him yell. Let him rave. Let him hit her. He would be dead, soon.
He was too drunk to notice any crumbs on her clothes. He just staggered in and slumped into his place. Thumping the table for his food instead of asking politely. Or asking anything at all.
She made certain he had plenty of the tassel grass root.
“What’s this muck?” he poked at it.
“Stew,” she answered. “It’s always stew. I went gathering them herbs all day. For your health, not that you care.”
He grumbled and growled, but was evidently too drunk to swing at her, so he fell on his food like a common pig.
She expected foam. Paroxysms of terror. The slow realisation that he was dying. She expected his face to change colour.
Nothing. He ate it, burped, and cheered, “That’s the best stew you’ve ever cooked, woman! What was that herb?”
“Uuuuhhhh… nyun,” she said in a fit of inspired desperation.
“Onion, eh? ’S good.” Another loud belch. “Use it more.”
She must have done something wrong. Ari, terrified of repercussions if she just made him sick on the morrow, dug through her stew for every fragment of the freshly-named Onion and crammed it all into her mouth.
It was delicious.
How?
And more importantly, what could she do now?
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