Tuesday 18 December 2012

The onion strikes back

Large
Is the onion the only organism that is skin through and through? Skin deep, as one might say.

Time was when peeling an onion was a struggle with several hard thick, tough inedible layers, which  elaborated their defence by being part inedible and part edible as one penetrated lower.

'Modern' onions (mostly it seems grown in Egypt - has unrest there provided yet another opportunity for commodity traders?) have clearly been bred (the edict must have gone out from the minarets of Tesco and Sainsbury) to have just one thin, distinct, disposable outer skin. But the process has gone too far and the skin is so thin it is difficult to detach from the next layer down except by tedious scraping.