End of Season Celery

We finally had frost and I harvested the celery in advance of it.  As usual, I have more than I probably need.  Celery always gets away from me.  I really only need two plants but that seems like so little in the spring that I end up with 6 plants.  They love the cool fall weather and just keep getting bigger and bigger until frost.

This little shoot could be cut off with some of the roots with a sharp knife  and potted up in some soil. It will keep growing over the winter and be good and ready for the garden next spring. 

A bigger side shoot that could be potted up.  It would likely go to seed in June or July of next year but it would still give some nice celery in the spring. I won't be potting either of the shoots up as I will just wait until February and plant some fresh seed.  Celery is easy to germinate.

You can freeze celery (best if you blanch it for 3 mins) but I wanted to try to keep it fresh for as long as possible.  The next week is above freezing so I have put it outside in a basin of clean water.  I washed as much of the soil off as I could before putting it in the basin.  I am hoping having light outside will keep it  from deteriorating. I will change the water every few days.

In the meantime, I am slowly using it up in cooking.  Last week I made celery-potato soup with two large stalks of celery, two medium sized potatoes, one carrot, a small onion (pre-sauteed), a few bits of Swiss chard and yellow pepper, seasoned with salt, pepper and marjoram.  I think thyme, or rosemary, or parsley would add some nice flavour, too. After cooking all the vegetables together, I pureed it with a hand blender but it could be eaten chunky. You could add some milk or cream at the end as long as you don't let it boil.  Also a sprinkle of parmesan or mozzarella cheese might be nice.

Just about any soup or stew can use a bit of celery.

I am going to try making celery-apple juice with ginger. Not because it is super healthy and cures everything - just because it will use up the celery!

I also like to make Waldorf salad.  My version is celery, apple, raisins, and walnuts in a mayonnaise sauce.  Some people like to add grapes or cranberries or sunflower seeds.  Anything goes with salads.

A quick and easy meal is to cook some hamburger meat with onions, celery, peppers, carrots, tomatoes and any other vegetables you feel like throwing in. Serve with rice or pasta.

I've always put celery in tuna or salmon sandwiches.  It adds a nice crunch and lightens up the fish which can taste a bit heavy.

On another topic, I found that my Just Sweet peppers will ripen on the counter.  The pepper at the top is what the yellow one on the bottom looked like about ten days ago.  I'm pleased that they do ripen as the flavour improves with ripening.  They are not as sweet as the ones that ripened outside in the hot sun but they are still tasty.

Hope you are all enjoying last season vegetables.