night of the radishes
When Magpie was looking for ways to persuade her daughter to eat more vegetables, Elephant's Child that that I am, I suggested that learning bizarre veggie facts might pique her interest. I started to look up a few examples and immediately chanced upon (cue scary music) The Night Of the Radishes, a festival that apparently takes place every December 23 when the residents of Oaxaca, Mexico gather in the town square and exhibit monstrously large radishes intricately carved and arranged into religious and historical scenes.
It's all very quaint and folkloric, but it does have vaguely ominous undertones. In fact, it reminds me of the little tune that we learned in French IV that was supposed to teach us the pleonastic ne:
il faut manger, manger, manger les radis
avant que les radis ne nous mangent*
And while it's good luck to dream of radishes, the dreams inspired by this particular song were more of the nightmarish variety, involving ruthless and rubicund tubers hellbent on a radishy revenge.
Which is a long way of saying that, while our CSA was supposed to deliver radishes this week, I'm just as happy that we somehow seem to have ended up with turnips instead.
*We must eat, eat, eat the radishes
Before the radishes eat us
12 comments:
I like both the radishes and the turnips. Yum.
Sadly, we ran out of radishes at my house today-- only one was left by the time I went to make salad.
What do you do with your turnips?
You are divine.
And Julia? Chop the turnips into a salad, just like you would radishes.
Night of the Radishes?!?!?! How , um, interesting.
It's posts like these which make me love your blog even more.
At first I thought I translated that incorrectly...
Niobe, not entirely off-topic, but The Fiance and I are going to be moving to Paris, for a brief (two month) period some time within the next few months. (Research trip for him; I'm tagging along and bringing my work with me.) Would you be willing to chat with me a bit about it? I understand if you feel doing so would give away more information than you're comfortable sharing...
Dayna: I'm more than happy to chat. You can email me at like.niobe.all.tears AT gmail DOT com.
Night of the Radishes sounds like one of those 70s giant-menacing-benign-thing movies, like Night of the Lepus, or Empire of the Ant. By the way, carving radishes made me think of Halloween and how one year, reading that turnips were the traditionally carved vegetable, I tried to carve turnips instead of a pumpkin. Each turnip had their mouths in large screams. (yes, a big hole was all I could manage.)
Night of the Radishes: sounds like the next hot vacation destination to me. :)
Niobe, I think you may have outdone yourself with this one.
Or perhaps I have just been living under a rock.
Was this the long-lost prequel to "Attack of The Killer Tomatoes"?
I think the thing with kids is that you can't try. Last night we went out with friends to sushi, Bella's first time at the restaurant. We ordered her tempura (meh) and egg sushi (decidedly meh). She switched seats so that she was sitting in between our friends in front of a plate of sushi, and proceeded to eat roe with her fingers ("It's pink AND sparkly! And kinda salty."), and then requested a piece of tuna sashimi, which she loved, and she ate an enormous piece. Sometimes if you don't fight, you win.
Night of the Radishes ... heh! I adore radishes ... not so much turnips. If we were in the same CSA we could swap!
http://mog.com/music/Autour_de_Lucie/Immobile/Chanson_Sans_Issue_(Ne_Vois-Tu_Pas)
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/106515/
It's a good song, and with both 'ne'.
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