Radio + Turnips = Saturday

Man, I love WNYC. (Join me Under the BQE and tune into 93.9 FM.) On Saturday and Sunday afternoons it brings especial happiness because Jonathan Schwartz comes on, one of those radio voices that speaks just to you and tastes every syllable.

Sampling from last summer:

It's a good escape. He just played "Summer in Ohio," "wasn't that just great?" he asks with a pregnant pause when the last notes fade.

"I could chew on tin foil for a spell
I could get a root canal in hell
But it wouldn't be as swell as this summer is gonna be!
'Cause the torture is just exquisite, while I'm waiting for you to visit
So hurry up, schmuck, get unstuck and get on the scene."

I love musicals.

It's brutally hot out, and Williamsburg, with its increasing dearth of buildings (can there be an increasing dearth?), feels like a big airstrip, concrete pulling light down on our heads like some hellbent avatar. (My first memory of an airstrip, incidentally, and the reason for their forever being associated with brutal summer, is of me and my grandparents at a Campvention in Ottumwa, Iowa, 1987.)

I'm caved up, sorting through today's CSA produce: turnips, beets, lettuce, savory (which I seem to have lost on the way home), tiny yellow squash, sturdy kale, and scallions that are all bulbs now, their tops shrivelled and cut as summer wears on.

Here's what I'm doing with two pounds of turnips:

1. Wash turnips, cut into matchsticks, and put into big bowl. Squeeze on some lime juice and grate out a bit of orange zest. Refrigerate until ready to use.
2. If you can bear it, once you've dropped off the compost and bought cat foot, go back out to fetch some plain yogurt and dried apricots.
3. Chop a few apricots into quarters and add to turnips.
4. Blend yogurt, soy sauce, dijon mustard, olive oil, savory (if you found it), salt and pepper, and maybe a little orange juice; dress turnips. (I snipped in some chives, too, and added a little bit of feta.)
5. Serve with some bread and beer when the sun goes down and appetites return.