Radishes

If you can grow vegetables in your backyard and eat them fresh every day, at least in the summer (for those of us who live in places with winter), you know how nice it is to have something that was just picked. However, for most of us, there simply isn’t enough backyard, or enough time in the day, to come close to raising all the vegetables we want to eat. Fortunately, there are farmers who do this for a living. Also fortunate is that clever people have devised machines that make every part of the process move more swiftly. This helps compensate for the fact that the number of farmers keeps dropping. It also makes food both more readily available and a lot more affordable. So please, go ahead and plant your garden, if you can–but then be grateful that you don’t have to limit consumption to a few warm months or what you can grow yourself.

Here’s one good example: radishes. This video shows a machine harvesting radishes in the Netherlands. The machine also gathers the radishes into bunches of 20, ready for the market. Remarkable.

If you want something interesting to do with radishes other than just put them on a relish tray or pack them in lunches, here’s something a friend suggested for when the radishes you buy are too strong to be enjoyable–or if you just want a new side dish, to shake things up a bit. This is a variation of a French approach to consuming radishes. It makes the radishes mellow and nutty.

Trim the top and stem ends of the radishes. (If the greens are fresh and green, look up a recipe that uses them, as they’re very nutritious.) Cut radishes in half lengthwise or, if they are very large, in quarters. Preheat oven to 400˚. Drizzle radishes with olive oil to coat and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Spread the radishes in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place in oven and roast for 25 to 30 minutes, or until beginning to get lightly golden brown and tender. Enjoy hot.

Of course, you can also toss the radishes into the roasting dish with a chicken or pot roast, or mix them in with other root vegetables you’re roasting. Roasting vegetables brings out the sweetness of root vegetables.

Fun Fact: Individuals

The term “individual” was not applied to humans until the mid-1600s. Before that, everyone was identified as part of a village. Village society was not about individuals but about the success and survival of the village. People didn’t live on their farms; they lived in the village and walked or rode to their farms (which were nearby, but were not considered home). In a time where villages were few and far between, considering the village as the irreducible unit would have helped ensure that everyone had food and a degree of protection.

The original source of the modern word is the Latin individuum, a noun that meant “an atom” or “an indivisible particle.” In Middle English individuum began to be used in the early 1400s to mean “individual member of a species.” But the idea that it could mean “a single human being” (as opposed to identifying people as a segment of a group) emerged in the 1640s. The current, common meaning of “a person” has only been traced back as far as 1742.