Celery Woes

Well, I just had to write and tell you about celery in our country. The picture above is a picture of what the celery looks like here. It's a root bult with some very skinny, limp stalks of celery. It has a fairly short season around here, so we have to get it while the gettin's good, if you know what I mean!!

Here's the crazy part . . . folks around here cut off all the stalks of celery, throw them away, and only use the root bulb. Yuck! I had heard stories of friends from home going to the local bazaar here to buy celery and bartering with the sellers to get the stalks they were throwing out. I'm going to have to learn how to do that in the local language, too!! Here's why . . .

I told Mark that we would fix his mom's stuffing recipe for our Christmas dinner when I realized that none of my celery from the last purchase survived long enough to use for Christmas. Off to the bazaar we went today. We found the celery seller and proceeded to tell him we wanted 1 kilo of celery. (Now that sounds like a lot of celery but remember they sell the root, too.) The guy started tearing off the stalks and I quickly told him I wanted the whole thing. Well, at least I thought I did. He kept pulling more off!!! I ended up with 2 root bulbs and a few scraggly pieces of celery stalk. Talk about disappointment!!!! We might have to supplement our stuffing with some celery seed I brought from home!

As we were leaving the bazaar on a side street I saw a pile of celery stalks you wouldn't believe - headed straight for the garbage dump I'm sure!! That motivates me even more to figure out how to save those limp little celery stalks!

I must say though before I close that the people here think we're just as crazy for using the stalks as we think they are for using the root. To each his own!! Who knows?! Maybe one day I'll learn how to make those yucky looking roots into something delicious!