Area folks have Georgia on their minds — or at least their taste buds — this week.
More than 5,000 pounds of sweet Vidalia onions arrived Monday morning. The onions, centerpiece of a fundraiser each spring for local Shriners, are grown only in Georgia, initially in the early 1930s near Vidalia, where low-sulphur soil contributes to their unusually sweet taste.
“They’re like eating ice cream,” said Shriner Jerry Skidmore, maybe with just a touch of hyperbole.
But who would question his, or his friends’ assessments, as they sat around a pallet loaded with bags of the onions at Boren’s Roofing, 306 N. State, and frequently had to put off conversation to help customers.
Many drove up without getting out of their vehicles and waited to have a bag, or two, sometimes several, loaded by the Shriners. By late Tuesday afternoon about 3,000 pounds had been sold, at $10 for each 10-pound bag.
“They won’t last long,” Skidmore said, probably not to the end of the week
Iola Shriners sold their first Vidalias in 1989. Immediately demand soared for the onion, so revered in Georgia it was selected the state vegetable in 1990.
“THEY ARE sweet, with no onion bite,” said Skidmore, as he talked about different ways the onions are enjoyed. “Some people like to eat them like an apple.”
“They’re good on sandwiches and hamburgers,” said Don Mohler, another of the Shrine peddlers. “Some people say they’re really good on a baloney sandwich.”
Covered in aluminum foil and roasted on an outdoor grill, next to a steak, is a favorite way for many to enjoy Vidalias, Skidmore added, and “you can cook them in a microwave. There’s even special dishes for cooking onions.”
He suggested “poking a hole in one and filling it with bouillon” before plopping a Vidalia in a microwave. “That makes them taste a lot like onion soup.”
A portion of money raised by the annual onion sales goes to support district-wide activities through the Mirza Shrine Temple in Pittsburg and some stays in outlying lodges to defray costs of such things as operating the Hardly Able Fire Company’s unit in Allen County, which delights spectators at parades each year.
The Iola lodge also uses proceeds to sponsor a high school student to play with the Shrine Band at the annual Shrine Bowl all-star high school football game, this year in Hays.
TUESDAY, JOHN Parker and Ronald Beasley Sr. joined Skidmore and Mohler in hawking onions from the comfort of padded chairs in a Boren storage building, with the door thrown wide open to entice motorists on State Street.
Their mission was twofold: To sell onions, which they did in spades, and to have a whale of a time enjoying conversation that flows easily among good friends.
