How essential are onions to your backyard or tailgate cookouts? Or parties and special occasions at home?  Or that “just like Grandma used to make only better” holiday side dish you take to every potluck?

Well, maybe it’s not the “bippity-boppity-boo” kind of magic that turns a pumpkin into a golden carriage, but only onions have the power to transform ho-hum backyard burgers into mouthwatering Oklahoma smash burgers, lackluster cheese tarts into Confetti Onion Tarts and Grandma’s applesauce into — you guessed it — Onion Sauce.

When you’re a part of the Treasure Valley’s onion community, your love for its wonderfully savory-sweet and famously versatile Spanish Sweet is considered a DNA marker.

You don’t simply talk the big Spanish Sweet onion talk; you walk the Spanish Sweet walk. And you consume Spanish Sweets and their big, big flavor with a passion.

Take, for instance, Sales Manager Jacob Gaschler at Fort Boise Produce in Parma, ID, who grew up in the Treasure Valley.

While the concept isn’t exactly rocket science — or even new-fangled, for that matter — the nation’s embrace of griddling in addition to grilling backyard and tailgate food was a bit slow catching on.

Technically speaking, griddles have been used since late in the Dark Ages and grills only since late in the Renaissance. Perhaps the lag is because a griddle doesn’t impart the seared ridges left by a hot grill on a T-bone and an ear of corn. Or maybe it’s because grillmeisters are a zealous lot resistant to change.

The service industry is taking note: in-house hotel dining options are increasingly important to travelers. And with demand on the rise for interesting and unique places to stay — with outstanding meals as well — lodging facilities are fulfilling consumers’ expectations not only with creativity but also authenticity.

Happy days are here again!

With COVID-19 no longer designated a public health emergency in this country and most others, both domestic and international transportation carriers have ramped up to full throttle, and consumers, eager to spread their own wings, have returned in large numbers to the air and highways/byways.

That pivot benefits the world’s economy, of course, as well as just about every conceivable industry in that economy — including the Spanish Sweet onion industry of Idaho-E. Oregon’s Treasure Valley.

Growers and shippers in the Treasure Valley of Idaho-E. Oregon have spent generations perfecting their craft — planting, nurturing, harvesting, storing, packing and delivering big, beautiful Spanish Sweet storage onions.

With approximately 20,000 acres planted annually, Idaho-E. Oregon’s Treasure Valley region is the largest storage onion-growing area in the nation.  Many of the family farms in the Valley are now in their third and fourth generations, and growers have become experts in producing the famed large yellow, red and white onions.