I have been faithful to my first love for all of my years. Others have entered my life, diverted my attention for a while, caused me to swoon and wax rhapsodic about their supposed virtues. But I can never leave what first set me on the path I have been walking since I was able to wander outside the confines of my yard.

My love is the onion, of course — the onion in all her forms. Though she wears many outfits, each suiting one of her many moods, the onion has always been the foundation of my cooking; everything starts with Queen Allium.

Two recent events reminded me of this. The first was the arrival of my mum, who taught me the basics of foraging. Mum is a Massachusetts Yankee, and after more than 70 years in woods and tidepools and meadows, she understands more than a few nooks and niches in the natural world. Mum visited last weekend, and as we spoke about what I do — fishing, foraging, hunting, gardening — she mentioned the sweet peas that grow wild on Block Island. As a child I wandered far and wide in search of sweet peas, eating every one I found on the spot.

Back in those days, we also would spend afternoons as a family gathering wild blackberries, wild blueberries and scores of hard-shell clams that hid themselves in the mud alongside stingrays and crotchety crabs. Thirty years later, I still think of Block Island as a Paradise on Earth.

But the sweet peas and the blueberries and the clams and the blackberries were not the first wild food I collected. That honor belongs to the humble allium canadense, or meadow garlic.

Meadow garlic grows wild in grass and lawns as a weed in New Jersey, often in thick clumps. When we used to “Play Army” as boys in the little woods across the street from the house, I was the one who discovered the “field ration” of the meadow garlic. Pull it just right and you can retrieve its little bulb. I quickly learned that by pulling every other bulb, the remaining ones would grow larger, giving me a better “ration” the next time I came across that clump while sneaking up on the Germans. This was my first Gardening Truth.

Since then I have always enjoyed the sharp, sulfurous taste of raw onions and garlic. When the sweet Vidalia and Maui onions come into season, I buy them eagerly and eat them raw, dressed simply with good olive oil and lemon juice or vinegar. These are salads I can happily serve to company. But when they are not in season, I sometimes make the same salad with a strong yellow storage onion and eat that salad by myself.

When I learned to cook, one of my first moments of wonder was what slow heat will do to the flavor of onions and garlic. It started with caramelized onions, and a sandwich from my homeland called a Jersey Dog, consisting of several hot dogs, grilled potatoes, peppers and onions with a smear of good mustard. I quickly learned that the best onions were those that had been on the flattop the longest — they were almost black, and tasted smoky and sweet.

I remember the first time I ate roasted garlic. It was 1993 and a beautiful girl named Molly, sunny and very much the daughter of aromatic hippies, had caught my eye and I hers. In our brief dance together, she convinced me to eat in what was then Madison, Wisconsin’s only vegetarian restaurant. Let’s just say there was an overabundance of quinoa. The appetizer we ordered was, ahem, spelt bread, with a whole head of roasted garlic as a spread. Molly had eaten it before, and smeared some of the caramel cloves onto the bread and fed me a slice. I was transported, both by the act and the flavor of this New Thing. But that was long ago. Now roasted garlic is a commonplace.

Onions have always been a commonplace, and it is why they are so often neglected. Someone once wrote that if onions and garlic were are scarce as truffles they would command three times the price: Truffles are a nicety, onions are essential.

I do not neglect them. One of my signature dishes is onions, caramelized in duck fat, sprinkled with a little thyme and drizzled with just a touch of Cretan thyme honey. I defy you to not like this dish.

It is a wonderful dish, but it is a dish for full-grown onions. This is springtime, and spring is for spring onions, green garlic (the young garlic before it sets cloves), chives, and, when you can find it, spring shallots. This quartet finds itself into nearly every dish I make from March to May. Their softness, their supple flavor, are signatures of spring.

I mentioned that there were two recent events that had reminded me of my obsession with the allium family. The other jumped out at me while walking the garden last week. I am growing, or will be soon:

• Chives
• Garlic chives
• Japanese long onions
• Two kinds of garlic
• Leeks
• Potato onions
• red cipollini onions
• French gray shallots

And the only reason no bulbing onions are in the mix are because I eat so many I would need a 40-foot row to grow enough for the year. As it is, I grow close to 100 heads of garlic a year. Is it any wonder I rarely get sick?

Each onion has its purpose. Chives and the larger garlic chives are a ready garnish. The Japanese long onions are specifically for when I cook Japanese food. The garlics are a staple; I grow a red, hardneck variety from Puglia in southern Italy, and a purple, softneck variety from Persia. The leeks are standard long-shank whites and are winter fare. The red cipollinis are specifically to pickle in balsamic vinegar. The shallots go in everything.

A word on the potato onions. These are a thing that many of you may have never heard of, and this is a shame. They are something like a cross between a shallot and an onion, and are grown like garlic. You plant a bulb in fall, it grows all winter, and by late spring you have 8-12 bulbs attached at a central point. If you are frugal, it is the last onion you will ever need to buy.

I first grew them in Virginia, and I still get my sets from the remarkable Southern Exposure Seed Exchange; I highly recommend this company.

Lately I have rediscovered a very old way to eat spring onions and green garlic: Coat the onions or garlic in olive oil, salt heavily and put under the broiler or, even better, over a smoky wood fire. When they are partially blackened, wrap quickly in foil and let them steam for 15 minutes or so.

You can eat them as the Spaniards do, lifted high over your head and gnawed down to your fingertips, or you can spin them like spaghetti if you want to keep your hands clean. I like the Spanish way; love is a messy business.