Ramp City

During my first year of law school, my roommate Lisa read an article on the health benefits of onions.  One evening, as we sat around the dining room table of the four-bedroom house we rented near campus, she raved about the humble bulb’s nutritional value.  “They’re packed with vitamins and minerals!”  She insisted.  “They’re filled with cancer-fighting properties!”

Shortly thereafter, Lisa - neither an adventurous eater nor experienced home cook - began eating onions, and onions alone, as dinner each night.  For weeks she followed the same evening routine: she would slice a medium-sized yellow onion (directly on the countertop - often leaving remnants behind for the rest of us to find days later), sauté the sliced onion in a little butter (sometimes with a crack of black pepper or a few chunks of roughly chopped garlic) and eat the dish as an entree; a simple, pungent, allegedly nutrient-dense entree.  It was pretty weird.

But I suppose we all had our quirks.  I attended law school right after college, and my weekday fashion had just barely improved as a graduate student.  Sure, I’d abandoned my go-to ensemble of pink and gray Victoria’s Secret “Pink! Collection” sweatpants, hot pink puffy vest, and pink and white polka dotted sorority flip flops (I promise I had friends), but I’d replaced this look with a daily uniform of jeans and oversized sweatshirts - so much that it was noticeable.  At one point - embarrassingly early into the semester - a law school classmate smiled kindly and said, “Wow, you sure have a lot of Michigan sweatshirts!”  At the time I owned maybe two Michigan sweatshirts.

Thursday nights were a big night out for law students.  Gunners, assholes and dweebs alike would set aside their highlighters and their self-importance, meeting at a local dive for shots, Bud Lights, and general, non-competitive revelry.  Everyone was equal while hunched over a “scorpion bowl,” mouths full of multi-colored straws, reckless in our consumption of the unidentifiable reddish concoction.

But this made for some painful Friday mornings.  Especially for those of us with 8 a.m. class.  One particular Friday I awoke - hungover and hurting - and realized I was going to be late.  I sprinted downstairs, grabbed the Michigan sweatshirt I’d left on the kitchen counter the night before (the other one was in the wash, probably), and ran out the door.

I barely made it in time.  I settled into my assigned seat near the front of the class and exchanged quiet pleasantries with Cosette, the woman seated next to me.  Class began as usual, but something was off.

“Do you smell that?” I whispered to Cosette.  “Something smells like onions.”  Cosette smiled a pitying half-smile, inhaling quickly before leaning in to whisper: “I think it’s you.”

***

Chicago is an onion town.  I didn’t learn the truth until years after I moved here, and, by the time I became privy to the secret I was - unknowingly - already fixated on it.

Each spring my siblings and I anxiously and nerdily await the arrival of ramps - the powerfully-flavored wild onion that signifies the onset of spring, and that comes into season for a mere handful of weeks - typically in mid to late April.  The first ramp sighting (at a grocery store, to be clear.  We’re not, like, foragers, though I wish we were) sparks a flurry of text messages on a group chain, and we begin plotting our menus for the week.  Ramp pesto! Ramp carbonara! Pickled ramps!  We have a field day (a figurative field day; again, not foragers).

One year in early spring, as we expressed delight over the bounty of ramps at Green City Market, one of the farmers finally filled us in: “Chicago is named after these, you know.”

No! What?

Local Native American tribes, he explained, originally called this area “shikaakwa” - which means “stinky onion” - because of the wild ramps growing along the Chicago River.

This place never felt more like home.

***

Years later, a guy I was seeing asked, via text message, if I could be any vegetable, which would I be? “A ramp,” I responded, without hesitation. “Highly anticipated, hard to get, unexpectedly spicy.”  However (because I think this counts as sexting for foodies, and I was trying to be coy), I left out the real truth of the matter: that stinky onion smell?  I think it’s me.