As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Like all good weeds, feminists have ruined celery by telling people to eat that shit to lose weight. From experience I hate celery as it was all I could eat when I was sick. It has no food value and you actually burn more calorie eat that fodder than there is in it.
It makes my tongue numb, so it must have some narcotic effect and it just tastes like something you do not want dominating anything.
What this post has to do though is a celebration of celery as a seasoning. In that celery as God intended it, it is wonderful............but it must be added the correct way.
Too many people chop up celery and throw it into soup. That makes it watery and mushy. That is the zero scale in food.
Here is what you do. You know what quart zip lock bags are right?
If not, you are in more need of help than this blog will provide for free.
This is what you do. You get yourself celery from the grocery when it is wilted on sale or on sale for 79 cents a bundle. This will take a few times at this, specifically FIVE so you are in this for the long haul.
You wash it.
Then you slice it up thinly, after you trim off the bad pieces, but you do use the leaves SO DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY as they make the best flavoring in soup.
Get lazy and make your pieces too think or big, and you will regret it when they show up in soup or hotdishes like a hunk of timber.
Once diced, you put them onto big cookie sheets with PARCHMENT PAPER down on the sheets. If you have an old gas oven with pilot light, you are good to go. If you have a dehydrator use that, if you live in bake your ass heat, you just sit them with a screen on them in the bake your ass heat, and if you have some type of fireplace, the trays will work in dry heat too.
My 90 degree pilot light oven will turn these chips into dried celery in about 3 days. You do not want them molding so damp and warm is not going to make what you need. The point of this is, that it takes about 5 bundles of celery to fill a zip lock quart bag. After the first one you do, you will think, "What the hell, there is nothing left!!!"
It looks better after the second batch.
Dried celery is concentrated flavor so it flavors soups better than that wet mushy chit. It does the job without getting in the way and done correctly, you will never notice the celery in the dish. It is what my frugal Mom always taught me as she was too tight to throw out the leaves of celery and was always drying them. As I do not like eating the stuff, but like it as a flavoring, that is where celery goes in the larder.
Once done and sealed, it will keep forever like all dried things.
You can do the same thing with basil leaves or anything else you desire. It is a bit trickier on low electric heat, but once you figure your oven out, it does work and then you can have things around by the bag that cost you a fortune if you purchase them.
It is just a point when the grocery has specials or has marked down wilted celery, I pick up a stalk and process it. Peppers can be processed like this too, but I like mine frozen and utilized that way as peppers are different.
That should about wrap this up on this horrid fodder known as celery. I think I will write of other menaces to humanity in salads soon.
Nuff Said
agtG
