Down with Celery!

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.
- George Bernard Shaw

I’ve heard of people who will eat anything. I’m not one of them. There are some foods I’m slightly off on, eggplant and summer squash to name a few. I haven’t given up hope for those foods, though. I keep looking for recipes that I hope will help me love them a little more. Right now, they’re mostly afterthoughts. Cauliflower was like that too until I roasted it one day. Now it’s a vegetable I actively seek out. I’ll admit, however, that there’s only vegetable that I truly despise:

Natalie Dee understands.

I’m going to talk about being little again. My mother thought she was a tricky one. I loved peanut butter, but I had emphasized my dislike for celery at an early age. The strings alone are enough to make my blood run cold (although on her show a week or two ago, Lydia made some offhand remark about removing strings from raw celery that made me think that if someone, years ago, had painstakingly de-stringed my celery I wouldn’t find it nearly so loathsome and vile). The taste is all right. I don’t always object if it’s in soups or dressings. If it’s not raw, I rarely pick it out. And, if a cookbook author insists it’s necessary for a recipe, I always follow his or her suggestion . . . the first time, which is how celery sometimes ends up in my house.

As far as I’m concerned, though, celery doesn’t have much going for it. About.com has been kind enough to pick through USDA nutritional data for us:

Nutrition Information for Celery:

The following nutrition information is for one serving of celery. That would be about two medium sized stalks of celery, seven and one-half to eight inches long, or 40 grams. This general information is for any variety of raw celery.
Macronutrients:

Water: 76.34 g

Calories: 11

Protein: 0.55 g

Carbohydrates: 2.38 g

Fiber: 1.3 g

Sugars: 1.46 g

Total Fat: 0.14 g

Saturated Fat: 0.034 g

Monounsaturated Fat: 0.026

Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.065 g

Cholesterol: 0 mg
Micronutrients:

Calcium: 32 mg

Iron: 0.16 mg

Magnesium: 9 mg

Phosphorus: 19 mg

Potassium: 208 mg

Sodium: 64 mg

Zinc: 0.10 mg

Vitamin C: 2.5 mg

Thiamin: 0.017 mg

Riboflavin: 0.046 mg

Niacin: 0.256 mg

Pantothenic Acid: 0.197 mg

Vitamin B6: 0.059 mg

Vitamin B12: 0 mcg

Folate: 29 mcg

Vitamin A: 359 IU

Vitamin E: 0.22 mg

Vitamin K: 23.4 mcg
Phytonutrients:

Phytosterols: 5 mg

beta Carotene: 216 mcg

beta Cryptoxanthin: 0 mcg

Lycopene: 0 mcg

Lutein and Zeaxanthin: 226 mcg
Source of Information: USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference

OK. It’s got a nice amount of potassium. But so do things I like, like avocados, and things I’m sort of OK with, like bananas. An article, “Think Celery!!!” makes a feeble attempt to direct us to additional benefits of celery:

Research has shown that celery contains blood pressure reducing properties. Celery contains active compounds called Pthalides which relax the muscles of the arteries that regulate blood pressure allowing these vessels to dilate. Pthalides also reduce stress hormones which can cause blood vessels to constrict.

The mere thought that I might have to eat celery, though, is enough to drive up my blood pressure. Besides, I just can’t trust someone who disseminates celery propaganda accompanied by this:

I’m not alone in this. Not, that myspace is the home for taste and breeding, but celery haters unite there. And there’s also this:

If this were the path all celery were to take, I’m not sure I’d be too disappointed. This is why I decided to put celery to the ultimate test.

Myth: Roasting vegetables makes them taste better.

If peanut oil, a little sugar and a good bit of roasting can’t cure what ails celery . . .

Does this look like an improvement to you? OK. To be fair, that roasted concoction above does taste better than raw celery. I’m not sure that’s saying much, though. It tastes kind of like celery jerky. Take that as you will. I had a few bites. I binned the remainder. At least it wasn’t rotten on its way out.

But this is the reason why it was in my kitchen to begin with:

Tempeh Sauerbraten

You know that cookbook? The one that’s been sitting on your shelves for years? You scanned it at the bookstore, found it half off at a secondhand place, scavenged it from a dumpster, whatever, but since you brought it home, you’ve barely looked at it? Well, that’s the book this Tempeh Sauerbraten recipe came from. I frequently refer to this book as “Carl Lewis’s cookbook” because he wrote the intro and has a few token recipes included, but really it’s written by Jannequin Bennett.

Originally, this started as an excuse to use up leftover sauerkraut (I’m trying to get away from eating weird foods for breakfast so no kraut and scrambled tofu for me). This looked to be the way to go. Thing of it is, this recipe instructs you to use three packages worth of tempeh, cut in two. I suppose she’s going for a meat-like effect here, but I found it difficult to manage 6 huge hunks of tempeh for browning in a pan that was also supposed to still be holding the mirepoix off to the side. Add to that, the fact that the sauce thickened without the aid of cornstarch, but ended up being too slight of an amount for my tastes and let’s just say I don’t think I picked the right dish from the book to start with. I’ll probably try this again, but I’ll marinate the tempeh in something first, cut the tempeh into smaller slices or chunks and brown it in a separate pan before simmering it in the sauce mixture (which I’ll likely double or triple because sauce is lovely). I might bump the spices up, too. I’ve never had beef sauerbraten, so it’s possible that it just wouldn’t have been my dish, but I think tweaking these things will take the dish from serviceable to something I’d put in my regular rotation. I’m definitely adding the Veganomicon Autumn Latkes and VWAV applesauce to round out the meal this weekend.

In sum: Celery is good for divination, lust and mental magick. It is best left out of food. Further, pumpkin makes everything better:

Sinfully dry sweet rolls are improved with a nice helping of pumpkin and soy milk.

I bought the coconut oil, too, for further sweet roll experimentation. I’m a little afraid of it, but we’ll see how things go. I’m also hoping to spend a little time this weekend actually making something from Veganomicon as opposed to reading it. I’ve been sitting on the samosa potato ingredients this entire week and it’s been killing me.