<style scoped>
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Viga&display=swap');
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto+Mono&display=swap');

* {
    border: 0px black solid;
    background-color: #ffe6e6;

}

.container_width {
  max-width: 100%;
  padding-left: 0px;
  padding-right: 0px;
}


a:hover {
  color: hotpink;
  text-decoration: none;

}

a {
  color: gray;
}

.content {
  padding-right: 50px;
  padding-top: 40px;
  font-family: 'Roboto Mono', monospace;
  font-size: 15px;
  padding-left: 20px;
}

.title_story {
  font-size: 80px;
  font-family: 'Viga', sans-serif;
  padding-left: 20px;
  padding-top: 20px;
}

.image_container {

  padding-top: 10px;
}

</style>

<template>
  <b-container fluid class="container_width">
    <MenuBar/>
    <b-row>
      <b-col md="8">
        <p class="title_story">Something light, like a salad</p>
      </b-col>
      <b-col md="2">
        <a href="/recipe"><b-img class="img-fluid" src="media/recipe.png"> </b-img></a>

      </b-col>
      <b-col md="2" class="small_icon">
        <a href="/leekpilaf"><b-img class="img-fluid" src="media/leek.png"> </b-img></a>

      </b-col>

    </b-row>


    <b-row>
      <b-col md="5">
<div class='content'>
  <p>
It's springtime here in Europe. You can tell by the sudden, welcome arrival of warmer, sunnier days and blossoms. It's been some small relief in this gloomy time to feel the seasons turn, a reminder that life goes on, resolutely. At the start of the lockdown, 5 weeks ago, we wore winter clothes. Today I'm in a t-shirt and jeans. Usually I'd confirm the arrival of spring with new fresh produce in the shops. Back in Australia, the meat industry spruiks spring lamb, and you start to get the first hints of stone fruit coming into season at the greengrocer's.
  </p>
  It's also Easter now, which usually means very little to me, just a time for egg- and rabbit-shaped chocolates. Australian Easter is in autumn, and spring begins in September. Here, I can clearly see how the symbolism of eggs and bunnies is related to spring and an awakening from hibernation. The past two years I've celebrated Orthodox Easter with friends, somewhat a new experience. Last year I was with Greeks who cooked lamb. A lot of it. Today, my Romanian friend is eating a raw spring onion, held in the hand. Pretty much the most minimal possible preparation, a rejection of culinary technique, to just eat the damn thing and not stand on ceremony.
  <p>
    <p>
Cooking, something I once loved, has become a chore. It's part of the upside-downness of this particular period of history. Inside is where we work and socialise, time has become nebulous and meals now less a fun event and more a shared responsibility. I still have a Japanese food Instagram account, although I haven't updated it for quite some time. It was once a way to document meals I cooked for myself and shared with others. This period of isolation began with plans to make many Japanese meals with my "quaranteam"; I learned a lot of recipes when I lived in Japan and I enjoy the sociality of Japanese food, which is often made communally.
    </p>
    <p>
      But I've been barely brave enough to leave the house, let alone go to shops to buy the things I need to make Japanese food. Most of these meals require substitutions anyway; at the best of times you can't get everything, even from an Asian grocer. For example, I usually substitute spring onion for negi, an ingredient ubiquitous to Japanese cuisine. I look up negi on wikipedia.org. In English, it's called the Japanese bunching onion, apparently. See also; scallion, welsh onion, long onions. These are just approximations, synonyms, definitely not the same thing as negi. Sometimes I buy salade ui (salad onion) in Dutch supermarkets. It's very similar to spring onion, I can't tell the difference. I imagine it has this name because of its mild taste and so can be enjoyed raw, in a salad.
    </p>
    <p>
      At home, over lunch the other day we talked about how we define cooking. Could you say that you cook a salad? We thought not. At best, you prepare a salad. But isn't cooking preparing food for consumption? Why is making a salad not cooking, then? Would you say that kitchen staff at fast food restaurants like McDonald's are cooking? Or assembling, according to set instructions? As a teenager, I worked one graveyard shift in a McDonald's and then immediately quit. I'd find it hard to argue that I cooked in those 8 hours. But I did prepare food for others to eat. How do we then define cooking, then?
    </p>
    <p>
      A German friend says "I guess in its origin, "to cook" must involve boiling water? Or heat, then. In German, for a salad I couldn’t say "to cook" (kochen) but would say zubereiten (prepare), and it would still apply to cooking in the sense of preparing food. I guess that would be the essence for me, preparing food to be eaten is cooking, no matter if it’s hot or cold. But in most cases you would not use the term, e.g. cook a salad".
    </p>
    <p>
    Cooking versus preparing versus assembling. I always thought it was interesting that the verb most often used in Japanese for "to cook", yaku, literally translates as "grill" or "bake". Can't grill or bake without heat. So, no cooking without fire. Ask someone to gesture "cooking" in a game of charades, and often they will shake an invisible pan with one hand and stir with an invisible spoon in the other. Stirring, or combining ingredients. Shaking, or moving the pan over heat. In winter, we want warm, stodgy meals. In springtime, we feel like something lighter, a salad.</p>

  <p>
    I share a photo on Instagram of my Romanian friend's hand, brandishing a chewed spring onion, asking if this style of eating it is particular only to Romania. "Yesss" says a Transylvanian.
  </p>
  <p>
    "No :)", says a Bulgarian. "I think it may overall be a Balkan thing. And it is the best way to eat spring onion and spring garlic. Yummmm".
  </p>
  <p>
  "Nope" says a Slovenian. "at least my Croatian relatives do it. And I think Hungarians too. So I guess we are no exception since we pick up on others. My relatives call it LUK :) Sometimes they would dip it in salt or sour cream. Yes, for Easter especially, but throughout spring too".</p>
  <p>
    I look up spring onion on wikipedia.org. It says they are native to China. I wonder how they travelled west, and how they were prepared to be eaten along the way, this new curious vegetable, this herald of spring. I wonder if a recipe (or lack thereof) travelled with them. Perhaps early European spring onion eaters decided on the most minimal preparation as a celebration of the new season, and a fitting way to respect its produce. A long onion, held in the hand, and eaten raw. A defiance of winter's imperative for heat and "cooked" meals, and a totemic gesture towards warmer, brighter and better days.
  </p>


</p>
</div>

      </b-col>
      <b-col md="7">
        <b-container fluid>
          <div class="image_container">
          <b-row>
            <b-col md="1">
            </b-col>
            <b-col md="10">
              <b-img class="img-fluid" src="media/onion/hand.jpg"> </b-img>

            </b-col>
            <b-col md="1">

            </b-col>
          </b-row>

          <b-row>
            <b-col md="6">

            </b-col>
            <b-col md="6">

            </b-col>

          </b-row>


        </div>

        </b-container>
      </b-col>
</b-row>
      </b-container>
</template>

<script>
import MenuBar from './MenuBar'
export default {
    name: 'onion',
    data: function() {
        return {
        }
    },
    components: {
        MenuBar
    }
}

</script>
