Onions
We all have different things we are interested in and good at. This is the wonderful variety of humanity. Conversely, we all have things we are not interested in or good at. I can't rewire my lamp, change the heating element on my washing machine, fix my car's spark plugs, or knit myself a new blanket. But I think we can all agree I'm still allowed to use my lamp, washing machine, car, and blanket.
Sure, I mean, I could learn. I could put in the hours. I could also make my own houmous, or pizza. But I don't. I buy it. I've tried making both houmous and pizza dough and have come to the conclusion I lack the aptitude and enthusiasm. Basically, I would rather spend my finite time in the day doing something else.
This is a trade-off the majority of us make all the time. Few of us make our own clothes. Or sausages. We buy our entertainment in the form of games and TV and music rather than standing around a piano - that we would have to craft ourselves. Should more of us make our own clothes? Probably. But we don't.
Some people like to insist the opposite is true, often - weird this - in the one thing they themselves are interested in. Which starts to feel like a weird form of gaslighting.
You should be growing your own onions! It's easy! You just need this much space and eight months and a tonne of compost and a way to keep birds and slugs from eating them and cats from digging them up to shit in them and to deal with the occasional half-magpie a fox was trying to bury and regular weeding and sometimes watering and good weather and an initial outlay for the seeds or sets and hope they don't get some disease that will destroy them and all this time and effort and money and finally somewhere cool and dry to cure them for weeks and then store them for months and then you can have a year's worth of your own organic onions. Simple!
Onions are so cheap to buy I'm not sure the maths breaks even on the upfront costs - never mind the time. You'd have to be some sort of unhinged to do this.
Or at least, you know, get some sort of other fulfilment from it. Ahem.
Growing food works for me, except when it doesn't, which is a lot, but it's a choice I make based on a variety of factors. But I'm not going to stand in the vegetable aisle of the supermarket hectoring people for buying onions.