It is hard for me to look at the football-shaped purple onion sitting on my counter top and not imagine it located in some seventeenth-century still life painting. But that's me. Others might see soup. That translucent papery-thin outer layer, part crackled, part flaked-off, looks worn and dry, almost tragic. It reflects the daylight as if it were an insult, This vegetable was not meant to be in the light. Its coating instead is meant to serve as a membrane against the damp, dark coolness of the soil, Given its natural setting it is no wonder that the onion (Allium cepa) is one of the great and classic remedies for the common cold — homeopathy at its folk best.
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