I'm the first to admit it: I do a lot of Internet shopping. For better or worse, there it is.
Lately in my excursions, I've noticed a retail trend. Specifically, a disturbing proliferation of these:
What are they? Moto-cross reading glasses? No. Safety eye guards that come with Barbie's Malibu Table Saw? I wish.No, brothers and sisters, these are ONION GOGGLES.
That's right - safety glasses designed to be worn while (help me) chopping onions.
Is It Me?
Does anyone else have a problem with this? And before I go any further, let me say that I love a good, silly product. Really, I do. You search my house (I'll need to see that warrant, btw) and you'll find plenty of Bump-Its and Bread Buddeez, and I've already left written instructions that I be buried with my Pig-Tail Food Flipper wedged in hand.
But, come on.
Special goggles for slicing onions? Exactly how fragile are we at this point in the social evolutionary process? More disturbing yet, is this only the tip of the hothouse-flower iceberg? What's next? Bacon-frying helmets? Paper-cut survival training? Steel-toed bedroom slippers?
I like to think that I can take on pretty much any food item in my kitchen mano-a-mano and come out on top. The way I see it, if Laura Ingalls Wilder could turn milk into butter without body armor, then I should be able to turn an onion into relish and live to tell the tale.
Besides, how many friggin' onions are you pushing through that kitchen of yours? If you've pulled KP duty on the U.S.S. Nimitz and you're looking at the business end of an onion Matterhorn, well, okay then. Goggle away and Godspeed.
Around here, though, I can safely predict that by the time I've rummaged through all the drawers and located a knife and my goggles, then spent ten minutes arranging the goggles so they don't rotate my bangs around to the wrong side of my head, I've lost all interest in slaughtering a single onion the size of a racquetball and instead I'm reaching for the phone to order Chinese-adjacent from the little place down the street with the broken neon sign and scented menus.
But, Wait. It Gets Worse.
It's not enough simply to fend off the ocular onion assault. One must do so with style. That's right - style.
Forget your parachute - what color are you onion goggles?
Let us now turn to The Book of Amazon.com, and let us read aloud a passage from Housewares 3:16...
"...for there were multiple choices upon the web sales page that there would be no one in the land who might be stricken with onion goggles in a color shade as to render his skin sallow and unappealing or otherwise demean his stature among the good people of his master-planned community. And the choices were many and thus:"
Okay, help me out. What are the rules here? Can you wear white onion goggles after Labor Day? Are the red ones too racy for work? Do the green ones make me look fat?
The reality of the situation is that if you invite me over for dinner and answer the door wearing a pair of onion goggles and brandishing a knife, I'm going to assume two things:
- Someone has secretly laced your bean dip with PCP.
- It's my civic duty to take you down.
I'm not entirely adverse to the idea of tear-prevention eye wear. And, while I will continue to battle fruits, vegetables and assorted luncheon meats armed with only a scrunchie and a can of Glade to knock down the fumes, I would be quite interested in goggles that would allow me to watch "Terms of Endearment" without using three boxes of tissues and changing my salt-soaked t-shirt every half hour.
Ooh, I hope they come in lavender.
40 comments:
I've thought of buying a pair for when I'm making a chili and I have to peel lost of onions.
But then I know I'd feel like a wuss so I don't.
Hehee!! Actually, I'm really allergic to onions. Like, overly. And they don't even affect my husband. So I'm not going to lie, I've thought about eyewear. But I don't think you need a specific kind of eyewear. My college roommate used her lab goggles. Evidently they worked well.
If I thought these might work...how I chop onions:
1) peel onion
2) run to sink to rinse eyes
3) start to slice
4) remove glasses, rinse away tears
5) chop more onion
6) blindly make my way to sink to rinse eyes
7) hurredly chop a few more and throw away rest
8) place in pan, start to fry, blindly leave room to recover
9) attempt to rescue burnt onions
But I see your point, really :)
wow! I think we are running out of things to invent when we start inventing onion goggles...lol but they are very very cool, i might just buy me a pair and walk around at night with them, i can look like elvis costello and if the need should arise to cut onions (which i never do) i will already be prepared!
this post made me laugh good and hard today, thanks for that!
I literally laughed out loud!! That was funny.
I don't think though that I will be buying sylish onion eye wear any time soon. But that's just me...
Dear, The Lord.
I buy my onions pre-chopped, not because of the tears, because of the laziness.
I have some onion goggles. They are called contact lenses. They work just as well and don't make me look either stupid or fashionable. I don't think I could wear the real kind. But I'm pretty sure my four-year-old would be all over the pink ones.
Can't I just wear my kid's Spongebob goggles?
(For chopping Spongebob, of course.)
You know - I do tend to lose all visibility during onion chopping due to the copious fume tears. So these do look kind of useful to me. But maybe not in fashion colors...
Laura Ingalls churned that butter to release her aggression.
I suggest you do the same, as this post is imbued with blatant anti-gadgetism.
CHOP CHOP!
If I were ever to spend my hard-earned coin on a pair of onion goggles, please, for the love of God, jam an onion down my throat until I stop breathing because I could no longer bear living with my wimpy self.
On another note, those colors are very sassy.
OMG>>that is the BEST INVENTION EVER!
Seriously, I want them.
I have many unanswered questions about these onion goggles.
Do they come with polarized lenses?
Do they come in Blublockers? (ahem: http://www.blublocker.com/ if you don't know what I'm talking about, Willis...)
Do they come with a nose guard as well, like my 7 year old's snorkeling mask that she only wears for swimming (not snorkeling) lessons at the Y and thus looks extra-spectacularly ridiculous?
I mean, they might think they've got a good product here, but I am seeing lots of room for expansion. Or competition. Get that Slap Chop/Shamwow dude on this, stat! (And RIP Billy Mays...)
Hysterical. Although I also cry enough when chopping onions to risk losing digits. That's why the Vidalia is key. But, you know, I think my scuba mask would actually do the trick. Hmm. And my snorkel is silvery-gray, which kind of works with everything. (Are you supposed to coordinate your onion eyewear to your outfit, or am I making an assumption here?)
Truly LOL Funny!!!
I, too, sort of wondered about Onion Goggles, especially as I could just wear my Incredibly Geeky ATV goggles (or my girly-girl pink full-face helmet), but don't... and probably should, along with kneepads & a goalie mask, given that chopping vegetables, washing dishes, making coffee, and even setting the table are all blood sports for me- I invariably cut/burn/bruise/scar myself whenever I enter the kitchen... Contact lenses seem to work on onions, though, come to think of it... So did marrying a chef, who can actuallly chop things without bleeding all over them...
Do people really have this much extra money left over after paying bills?
I just can't believe that.
Wow. I didn't know you actually made relish from scratch. Another day, another important piece of information about Anna.
Then I suppose I shouldn't tell you about the 'Nard Gard', for those times when you absolutely must fry bacon naked.
Not that I've done that.
Anna Lefler--thank you. The Bible finally makes sense to me. It's all one big Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog.
Actually, that steel-toed bedroom slippers idea is a pretty good one.
Also, loved the phrase "ocular onion assault." Literary bonus points awarded!
I personally feel stronger and more empowered in the kitchen when tears are streaming down my face. A more sensitive slicer, if you will. Why would someone want to take that away from me? Why?
I would, however, be in the market for some steel-toed bedroom slippers. Those door-stops just come out of nowhere.
When we moved in September,we purged a lot. Now, I am ever on my toes about not accumulating more stuff. I'll leave the goggles for someone else.
Hey, don't mock them.
I'm part of an onion speed chopping league, and lemme tell ya, without these specialized glasses we couldn't safely perform our highly synchronized precision speed chopping routine. Heck, the tumble mat portion of the event *requires* all participants to wear them. Good luck in even trying to qualify for the 'tourney without 'em.
I've tricked mine out with images of the California Raisins.
-terribleanalogies.com
how much are they? Cause I can't decide whether or not to buy them or toss my money in the street. Same thing right?
Haha, thats good. Onion goggles.
Our society is just so advanced, you know? We have problems like oil leaks, the recession, etc., but thank god- we've solved the problem about crying and onions.
It's practically landing on the moon all over again.
Thanks for bring me this ridiculousness!
WTF? If you're a dude and you use these I hope it comes with a sack to keep your balls in, because the sack you currently keep them in obviously isn't doing the job it should!
I've got those already - they're called eyelids and they magically open and close almost involuntarily!
Interesting!
So how about an onion goggles giveaway for the top 5 commenters?
Forget the onion glasses. I need jalapeno pepper cutting nose pinchers. So that my nose hairs can recover at some point.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a pair of Ove-Gloves for bacon frying....
I was feeling all superior about really not ever crying when chopping onions until I read Mommytime's comment. Contact lenses ... who knew?
Where do you find this stuff man????
If you wear those on your humor panel, I will legally change my first name to Lefler.
i've heard tell that if you keep your mouth shut you won't tear up.
But for some reason i forget and stand there peeling and chopping and mouth breathing. If someone without a memory problem trys this please let us know if it works.
Yes, if only they made goggles to balance our moods instead. I suppose that's what Prozac is for. There is a new blanket on the market that goes over your bed that keeps the, ah well how can I say this, pungent gaseous body odors from escaping and offending one's spouse. This product frightened me as well.
wow.
Clever and funny!!!
This is so funny! I'm wondering who cooks with onions this often - where they would need to purchase special "onion eyewear" O_o
That is awesome; I just wish I thought of it first!
Apparently there is a market!!!
Those glasses are totally stupid.
If you keep your onions in the fridge they never cause a problem.
Just saw this journal entry as I was searching online for... onion goggles! So let me make a point...
When I first saw these on sale years back, I had the exact same reaction! What a complete waste of time and money!
Now years later, I'm working for a rather large meat factory, and one of our products involves... raw onions! So we have hundreds of pounds of raw onions being chopped, sliced, grated etc for this product. As you can imagine, the production floor is akin to a chemical warfare zone... people can't be running away to rinse out their eyes (as they would have to de-gown, sanitize, re-gown, re-sanitize etc..) and this would result in huge production loss! So the answer? Onion Goggles! So looks like there may be a legitimate use for them after all!
Now... about that automatic dog patter........
Post a Comment