{"id":1624,"date":"2020-10-17T00:08:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T00:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/?p=1624"},"modified":"2020-12-25T10:51:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T10:51:21","slug":"accidentally-became-influencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/accidentally-became-influencer\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Accidentally Became an Onion Influencer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The isolation that COVID-19 forced upon us affected everyone differently. Some people went nuts at being indoors only a week or two into the isolation while others found constructive, interesting projects to take their mind of the dread of living through a global pandemic. I was one of the latter, but while other people dedicated their time and energy to baking bread<\/a>, learning to crochet, or creating macram\u00e9 \u2013 mine was extraordinarily niche: I became an Instagram influencer\u2026 through a pull-cord onion slicer.<\/p>\n

Now \u2013 this story deserves some context. Being an English teacher, I have a bit of a following among my high school students. Once I realised that a large percentage of them really didn\u2019t know how to cook, I decided to post a few recipes on my Instagram feed\u2026 just a few staple recipes while making liberal use of Boomerang for my own amusement.<\/p>\n

Each recipe I posted, however, had onions in it in some way or another. Even things like a simple Napoletana called for a diced onion. This led to my husband and I blindly scrabbling at our faces as horrible, stinging tears clouded our eyes. I put my foot down \u2013 this was too much.<\/p>\n

Road to Influence<\/h3>\n

If I was going to take a shot at being a semi-legitimate influencer, onions were going to be an everyday occurrence and I refused \u2013 REFUSED! \u2013 to give them any more of my pain.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n
\"Recipe-Creamy-Vegetarian-Onion-potato-soup\"<\/a><\/td>\n\n

Looking to satisfy your onion craving?
\nTry this Creamy Vegetarian Onion and Potato soup<\/a><\/strong> recipe!<\/h4>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

Later that night, I did my best to make up for the pounding onion-cry headache that we all get by finding an onion chopper. Once upon a time in our household, we did actually have an onion chopper that worked well. It was the type where you put the halved onion on a grate of razor-sharp blades and smash it through the blades with an attached arm. However, it wasn\u2019t built super well and we were left with a bunch of blades that were warped and sad-looking after only about a year \u2013 leaving us to chop onions by hand again.<\/p>\n

I stumbled upon this beautiful little device, the Verimark Twista Pull Chopper<\/a>. It was love at first sight \u2013 instant retail therapy. I ordered it immediately and it was delivered to our house the next day. I made liberal use of it in a French Onion soup that night as I sliced and diced my way through six white onions (which were particularly strong) with nary a tear shed!<\/p>\n

Oh, onions, how we love thee!\u00a0 Let us count the ways!<\/h3>\n

Since then, it\u2019s been featured in just about every recipe I\u2019ve put up on my feed \u2013 onions are just so versatile! Melanzane \u2013 they\u2019re in there. Mushroom risotto \u2013 gotta have it. French Onion Soup \u2013 no brainer! Cheeseburgers \u2013 are you kidding me? What\u2019s a cheeseburger without caramelised onions? I don\u2019t think so. I\u2019m not exactly sure if onions are usually this prevalent in my cooking, or that I\u2019ve fallen so in love with this particular cooking device that I\u2019m just using any excuse to use it, not cry, and post about how much I love it on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, having efficiently chopped onions isn\u2019t where the story ends. Recently, I\u2019ve been getting requests from my followers about where to get this fabled kitchen appliance that I may or may not love more than my husband and a couple of them have actually gone out and bought the thing. I haven\u2019t exactly figured out how to contact the manufacturers to make the case that their company is only afloat thanks to me but I\u2019m working on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took COVID-19 to turn Simply Souperlicous writer, Tayla Blaire, into an overnight Instagram influencer, thanks to an onion slicer!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":1627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_aioseo_title":"","_aioseo_description":"It took COVID-19 to turn Simply Souperlicous writer, Tayla Blaire, into an overnight Instagram influencer, thanks to an onion slicer!","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[207,382,401,413,404,47,76,384,395,495],"class_list":["post-1624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soup_and_soul","tag-covid-19","tag-culture","tag-french-onion-soup","tag-influencer","tag-lifestyle","tag-onion","tag-red-onion","tag-soup-and-soul","tag-soupsoul","tag-tayla-blaire"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplysouperlicious.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}