If Radishes Find You

Here’s what you can do.

Have you received any unexpected items in your home grocery delivery?

I ordered fresh beets but got three bunches of radishes.

I wish I enjoyed fresh radishes, but that sharp taste is too much for my Minnesota Mild taste buds. With so many people experiencing food insecurity, I couldn’t throw them out. I stifled my irritation, because I am one of the truly lucky people who can pay for home delivery.

Keep your grocery list simple and be patient

I will never know if those radishes were a produce substitution or a mistake. Common dairy items sell out as soon as they come in. The regular cheese section has been consolidated. Be glad you got your regular items and consider ordering your specialty items elsewhere and buy in bulk.

What I do know is that grocery stores and their staff are overwhelmed. They have always been essential workers, as this pandemic has made abundantly clear. The people who pick up your grocery items at the store and the delivery drivers are temporary workers. There are so many ways things can go wrong.

My daughter shared this article after a two-day text blitz with an order that never made it to our house.

We finally got our order four days later. I hope our order got delivered twice and arrived on the doorstep of a household who needed it even more. I also hope nobody got fired. I will never know and I am not filling out any satisfaction surveys until the pandemic concerns ease up. People are doing the best they can and they deserve to get paid.

Is there a way we could tip these essential workers like we do Lyft or Uber drivers? Or better still, be able to add money to their Health accounts or their banked PTO accounts. I’ve always wanted to do this for the other essential workers that clean my office building, but I wouldn’t know where to start.

What did I do with those radishes anyway?

My husband and I dared each other to eat one radish raw. My radish burned all the way down. It was worse than drinking shots.

I remembered the oddball soup recipe I had tried out at the beginning of the stay-at-home order. It called for white beans and black olives and tasted great. It would be easy to sneak those radishes in with all the other vegetables. The only giveaway was that the broth turned pink, but those radishes were bland. Success!

Soup is cheap & easy

I’ve spent the last year making soup because soup is what you make when vegetables are past their prime, you can’t get to the store, or you are broke. Just because a recipe calls for an ingredient, doesn’t make it essential. If you don’t have something, substitute it for what you actually have. Rubbery carrots, limp green beans, or drooping celery perk right up in a soup pot.

Fresh spinach, leaf lettuce, cabbage, chard, beet greens, celery tops and radish greens are wonderful in soup; so are yams, zucchini, yellow squash, radishes, kale — even green beans. As long as they aren’t slimy. This can happen to sealed bags of produce like spinach, lettuce, and green beans.

There is a remedy: spray the slime off of those forgotten vegetables, then fill your sink with cold tap water and use your hands to separate the fresh from the “compost.” Place the tolerable on a paper towel to dry out. If they cling, they are too far gone.

I’m not ignoring potatoes, pasta, or rice, but they absorb the water and can make soup gummy when it is reheated. Consider pre-cooking these ingredients and adding them right before serving.

There were still two bunches to go

A few days before Easter, I gave them away to two families with children who had recently moved into the neighborhood. In case they didn’t like radishes either, I put in apples, bananas and some spray chalk and sidewalk chalk.

Kids have been decorating the sidewalks for the last month.

I haven’t seen any chalk masterpieces next door, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t happening in secret.

It’s such fun to knock on someone’s door and say, “I don’t have grandkids and I’ve been saving these for someone special,” and run away.

Soup Recipe

(based on the Moosewood Cookbook on page 22)

• 2 cups navy beans soaked overnight
• 3–4 garlic cloves or garlic paste
• chopped onions (1/4 to 1 cup)
• 2 cups vegetables
• 2 tsp. Italian seasoning (or Herb de Provence)
• 1/3 cup tomato pastes, sauce, or spaghetti sauce
• 1 cup sliced black olives
• 2 cups navy beans soaked overnight
• 4 cups broth or water and 1 bouillon cube
• Lemon juice or vinegar to taste (don’t forget)
• ( 1/2 to 1 cup cooked meat — sausage or deli meat works too)

Simmer the onion, garlic in olive oil until they soften. Then the vegetables, then the herbs, beans, and the stock. Cover the pot and simmer. Buon Appetito!

Homemade Soup’s Secret

Homemade soup is the one leftover that tastes better the next day.

Thanks to Shaunta Grimes, Vanessa Robinson, Audrey Wells, and Ariel Kern for their editorial and food suggestions. I’ve never heard of peanut butter and radish sandwich on sourdough bread.

Food Insecurity is happening right now

I was taking a walk near my local library when I noticed a line of waiting cars a block long. I asked a woman driver what was happening. “It’s a food pickup, but you have to be in your car.”

Many of us are experiencing food insecurity. I included the Feeding America website and fact-checked the listings by searching the food shelves in my city. I donated my credit card points to my state’s food bank. I’d like to do more.