Georgia On My Mind

Vidalia onions are sold out for the season. For 22 years of living in the Caribbean, I sorely missed these wonderful tasty super sweet onions. They are like no other onion  on earth. You can peel them without crying.  They are super delicious, especially raw.  If you've never had one, then your life might be just plain sad.  

I almost feel terribly guilty when I cook them. I can eat a sandwich with a sliver of meat or cheese and a huge thick crunchy chunk of Vidalia onion. The taste is awesome.  Nothing can compare. There are southerners that eat Vidalia onion sandwiches. These onions are so delicate that they bruise easily. They must be handled very carefully as they are somewhat fragile. 

Vidalia onions can only be grown in Vidalia Georgia where they have the perfect weather, water and soil to make them sweet. The dirt is low in sulfer which prevents the onions from developing a pungent taste. It's the sulfer gasses released from regular onions that tend to make you want to cry. It's  higher water content in Vidalia onions rather than sugars that make them taste sweet but also make them a bit more delicate. 

Storage is at a premium in my little old wheel estate, so my "keep in a cool dark place" items such as onions, potatoes and winter squashes, I keep in an Easter basket under my side table. 

Speaking of delicate things...  Recently I took my motorhome on a test drive through the Cherokee foothills. A few weeks back, I had to cough up a bloody fortune for general engine maintenance plus repair the transmission and rear brakes. 

Yucky poo is all I have to say about that right now. 

So I haven't driven more than 10 miles since the repairs were made, so while I had company we took the RV beast out on some day trips towards the BLue Ridge mountains north of Lake Hartwell. 

At Tallulah Gorge in the Chatahoochee Forest part of the trail was paved with this wonderful rubbery mat. It looked like shredded rubber, but upon further inspection it appeared to be a type of matting.  

Walking on it was heavenly! It gave a real spring to my step.  My feet and sandals felt luxurious as I bounced down the path. 

It's a marvelous recycling idea, one that I hope to see repeated elsewhere. 

We were able to see some of  the the breathtaking falls.  Tallulah gorge is over a thousand feet deep and about two miles long.

Shown here is L'Eau d'Or (LaDore) Falls.

We didn't hike to the bottom of the falls as it included navigating something like 700 metal steps and requires a free permit.

Due to weather, permits had been suspended for the rest of the day but not before we met an enthusiastic family that got the last permit and was starting down at one in the afternoon.

I cropped my picture, so it appears as if I was much closer, but I was pretty much a fifth of mile high from the the lush pool of water.

We did some hiking on the rim trails which were pretty easy but at the time we were there the humidity was incredible, my clothes were soaked in short order, despite the copious amounts of water we were drinking.

So exactly what did we buy in the gift shop as a souvenir of our visit?

A jar of Vidalia Sweet Onion Relish.