When I rented my first house after I graduated from college, I got the experience of regularly mowing my lawn—a chore my dad normally claimed when I was a child.
My first lawnmower was electric, leading to me learning to wrangle an extension cord around the yard and moving it to various outlets as I reached different corners.
I’m proud to note that I never managed to accidentally run over the cord in the process.
Now that I’m married, Joey has lawn mowing duties—something I was all too happy to relinquish with my grass allergies, but I couldn’t help but have flashbacks with all the rain this week to having to clean out a clogged lawnmower when Mother Nature soaked the grass for a few days in a row.
Part of that memory of mowing my first lawn is the distinct smell of onions.
A past owner or renter of the house must’ve had a vegetable garden at some point, and mowing the backyard meant encountering quite a few volunteer green onion plants.
I never minded the aroma, actually preferring it to cut grass, and once I figured out where the patches were, a few onions made their way into my kitchen, too.
I don’t know how those of you who have gardens are faring so far with the floodwaters, but I hope the green onions still manage to make their way into the local grocery stores and farmer’s markets this summer.
My favorite way to use green onion is in a cream cheese dip my mom makes for family get-togethers. I’m sure the recipe exists somewhere online or in a cookbook, but I know this as one of her specialties.
A couple notes: the corned beef it calls for is a small package, sliced for sandwiches. If you can’t find corned beef, another thin-sliced beef can be substituted. The idea is to have little wisps of meat throughout the dip rather than big chunks.
Also, you can form this into a cheese ball rather than keeping it in a bowl for serving once it sits in the fridge over night, but I’m a firm believer in making it easy to store leftovers and not making more dishes than necessary, so I always just serve it straight out of the bowl.
Onion and Corned Beef Cream Cheese Dip
Ingredients
- 2, 8- ounce blocks cream cheese
- 1 bunch green onions
- 1, 2- ounce package sliced corned beef
- 1 box of sturdy crackers
Instructions
- Slice the green onion into about quarter-inch slices and dice the sliced corned beef into small pieces.
- In a microwave-safe bowl that also has a lid for storage, add the cream cheese and microwave on half power for about 30 seconds, until it’s soft and easy to stir.
- Dump the green onion and corned beef into the cream cheese and stir to combine well.
- Cover and store the dip in the refrigerator over night and serve with your favorite crackers (my recommendations are Wheat Thin or Ritz type crackers).
If you’re not a fan of onions, you won’t be a fan of this dip (if that wasn’t obvious on its own). Our family loves it. My mom will often double this recipe for our get-togethers, because it’s always a huge hit. Make sure to have plenty of crackers on hand to enjoy every last bit of it. Also, definitely let it sit in the fridge overnight. The flavors will meld much better, and the consistency will be perfect.
Since I no longer have free onions out in my backyard, I had to resort to the grocery store for my ingredients this time. Maybe someday I’ll have to try growing my own.
For now, though, with all the moisture, our backyard has begun to resemble a jungle more than a garden. Maybe I’ll have to try growing something tropical instead.
This piece first appeared in print on May 30, 2019.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.