Melanie's celery, despite being overtaken by her tall, beautiful, lanky cosmos, did very well this year. As a result, we have more celery than we can use right away.
Luckily for us, celery can be frozen. Of course, it will loose it's crisp texture, but we usually just use it for cooked recipes anyway, so limp celery is just fine with us!
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| June 2010 |
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| September 2010, hidden beneath the cosmos |
There seems to be some debate about blanching or not blanching celery. While it's a little bit more work, we're fans of blanching. Blanching stops the enzymes that affect the texture, colour and flavour of vegetables even in the freezer. I never believed there could be that much difference between blanching or not blanching until a terrible pea experience last year. Based on a convincing internet tip I read, I froze some peas without blanching. While they looked fine, their sweet flavour was destroyed and I ended up tossing them because they tasted like 10 year old frozen peas. Now, we blanch everything - even celery.
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| September 30 (2/3 of our celery harvest) |
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| Trim and wash the celery |
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| Chop to desired size |
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| Blanch for 3 minutes |
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| Cool in ice water for 3 minutes |
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| Dry and freeze |
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