OW!!!
So to distract myself, allow me to talk about onions and celery.
Onions and celery are like two ends of some kind of culinary spectrum, they're like the same note, but out of phase. I shall explain. Onions, when eaten raw, hit your whole head with a cinder block of pungence. Your sinuses fill with the sharp, nearly sulphuric wave of intense FLAVOR. Not many people i know enjoy such a prospect. Celery, however, is a gentle backrub of taste, insinuating itself without much notice upon the palate, gently conveying a crisp, clean, mountain-breeze of flavor.
However, when cooked the tables are quite floor-scratchingly turned. The presence of onions in cooked food is distinctive, but so pleasant that it's also ubiquitous enough that probably most casual food eaters don't even notice that, say, their meatloaf contains an entire onion chopped finely. There's a warmth, a coziness about cooked onions which agrees with perhaps everyone. Celery, on the other hand, besides retaining its distinctive texture far longer while being cooked, can utterly color the outcome of any dish it's added to. The crispness of flavor of celery's raw incarnation continues into its next life of cookedness, but the character is different by context. It becomes a distinct tang, which may or may not cooperate with the dish's other flavors, or the tastes of the sensitive gourmand. Most cheap canned vegetable soups taste overwhelmingly of CELERY (and burnt beef stock), even if twice as much onion is used as celery in the recipe.
So, when you're making soup or stew, toss that whole Peruvian Vidalia in. But careful with that stick of green!