Desperate times call for desperate measures.

On Saturday Oliver announced his expectation that our regular smoked salmon bagel routine be hewed to. I was able to scrounge almost everything I needed from items on hand, except for pickled onions.

What to do?

Make pickled onions!

I’d been under the impression that this would take weeks. It does not. Here is my easy recipe:

• Put the kettle on.
• Slice up some onions. I didn’t have any onions, so I sliced up some shallots.
• Put the sliced onions in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let sit for a minute or two.
• Prepare a mixture of apple cider vinegar, sugar and salt. I had no sugar, so I used molasses.
• Put the onions in the vinegar mix and put in the fridge until cool.

Now you have pickled onions. Or, in my case, molasses-pickled shallots. And a happy child.

Bonus song to sing while making pickled onions:

Oh Oliver, you’re a funny one, with a face like a pickled onion and a nose like a fat tomato, but we still love you…

Repeat for every person in the room.

Thanks to my fellow YMCA summer day camp councillors for the memory.