When I started making vegetable-chicken stock soups (back when we became Waldorf-y), celery re-entered my life. The whole mirepoix thing. And I discovered that celery, when cooked as part of an undeniable homemade soup, not only did not make me gag...but I liked it.
Yesterday we received a bouquet of celery in our CSA batch of veggies. This variety of celery pretty much needs to be cooked because it is quite spicy. I cut the ends and washed the stalks to put away in the fridge.
And I was awestruck by the leaves.
They were so beautiful. And fragrant. So fresh. (And I had a feeling they had nutritional value.) How could I throw these away? I considered asking my vegan neighbors whether they'd like to use the leafy bounty. But, there was a lot and...I found myself wanting to use them myself.
Huh?! Me and celery. We've come a long way.
The color of the leaves is truer in this shot. I made a simple soup. I sautéed the chopped celery leaves in olive oil (about half of the bunch, the other half I froze for green smoothies) and then added about half a box of beef broth. I doubled the liquid with filtered water and then popped in a veggie bouillon cube. After it cooked for a bit, I added some honey for a touch of sweet.
Gem and I liked it (though he only wanted a bit of leaves). Sag did not care for it.
These end-of-season turnips were freebies at our CSA pick-up site. I had just flipped through my new fermenting book the night before. I thought I remembered the author (a graduate of my high school) mentioning turnips amongst the many vegetables one can ferment tastily. So, inspired, I grabbed a few handfuls of these ugly beauties.
(Full disclosure: I have been a vocal advocate of not using Amazon to buy books for about a year now. But, this book, a hardcover discounted 40%...I bought this from Amazon.)
I will let you know how the fermenting goes!
Peace and local organic veggies.
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