On Saturday, we attended the annual Texas Onion Fest in Weslaco, Texas.

We attended the festival for our first time last year, and very much enjoyed it, so even though the forecast was for extreme heat, we decided to go again. Besides, I had a bucket list item to fulfill (tomorrow’s post). If you’re curious, you can find a clue about my bucket list item here in my post from last year.

The Onion Festival is held yearly to celebrate the Texas 1015 Onion. Weslaco played a vital role in the development of the disease resistance in these onions.

“The Texas 1015 was released in 1983 and nicknamed the “million-dollar baby” because of the enormous cost and amount of time it took to develop. Sweet Texas 1015 onions are robustly softball-sized round, thin-skinned yellow onions with a mild, juicy non-tearing crisp white flesh. The onions have warm and sweet aromatics, due to the presence of the compound, eugenol. Sweet Texas 1015’s trademark sweetness allows them the title of being considered one of the sweetest of the all sweet onion varieties. They are also harvested and sold young, with their green tops attached. Younger Sweet Texas 1015’s are even sweeter and more tender than their cured counterparts.” (From onionpatch.dixondalesfarms.com)

My feature photo is of a typical sight at the festival. There are onions everywhere as people purchase their precious 1015’s.

Proud to show off her haul and graciously agreed to let me take her photo

One of the singers on the main stage even closed his act with, “And don’t forget your onions!” We had a good laugh at that.

Photo Note: For my feature photo, in order to compensate for the harshness of the noon sun (which blew out the original), I did a little exposure adjusting in the native photos app on my phone. For the other photos, all I did was crop and resize. Even though the day was brighter than desirable for photography, I managed to find the lady in the last photo in a shady spot, which always helps.

“A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman”

Terry Pratchett