Are You Savvy with Celery Stalks?!

So sorry about the post title...had to do it.  I have two very different recipes that are celery centered (again - sorry) from different time periods in American history.  The first one hails from a time when frugality was the banner held in every American household and stretching food was a main goal for every woman who cooked for her family.  I'm not talking about the 70's although I very well could be, no, this recipe is approximately 100 years old and would have been carried to work in the field or to school in a lunch pail and provided plenty of nourishment.  It may have been served at the dinner table but I can see it's usefulness for eating on the go wrapped in paper or wax paper.  Not very pretty but terribly practical and filling! 

Celery Cutlets

Take a cupful of finely chopped celery, a cupful of cold baked beans, two well beaten eggs, two tablespoons of bread crumbs, the same quantity of melted butter, salt, pepper and a little lemon juice; mix all together and shape into oblong balls, roll in finely grated bread crumbs and fry in deep fat.

Yum.  My sons will eat anything fried in deep fat.  Seriously, I don't know why I bothered with all that healthy eating stuff when they were kids.  Fat is king.  It also kept people full and satisfied if there wasn't much else to go around. 

Now - on to the fancy and mainly for show recipe from the 1950's when housewives were persuaded into spending hours and hours in the kitchen creating these things with the sole purpose of outdoing a neighbor or earning a reputation as the most creative in the kitchen.  In this case, the 'Canape Connection'.  Sorry.  Not really.  Read on for some 1950's fun - I think I figured out how to construct this and at the end of the recipe I'll tell you how!

Stuffed Celery (Canapes)

3 stalks celery
6 oz. butter
1/2 pound bleu* cheese
salt, black pepper
slices of good* white bread cut into small rounds, toasted if desired

Cut the green part off the celery, remove all the pieces and wash them well in a very cold salted water.  Dry well in a cloth, then cream the butter add the bleu cheese which has been rubbed thru a sieve, and the salt and pepper.

Spread the pieces of celery very thickly with the cheese mixture and reshape the celery stalks.  Roll the up tightly in wax paper and refrigerate for two hours.  Remove and cut into thin slices and place them on rounds of bread or toast.

Tops can be decorated with small rounds of canned pimento or slices of stuffed olives.  Serve very cold.

*Sooo.. bleu cheese spelled that way can only mean that this is a fancy appetizer type recipe meant for a very fancy dinner party that most likely does not involve children but most assuredly does involve martinis!  And the reference to 'good white bread' can only mean - stay away from 'Wonder Bread'! 

Once the 'bleu' cheese mixture is added you slice it this way!

OK.  Here's how to do this thing. You cut the tops and bottom off (save the leafy greens for soups, etc.) wash the separate stalks, dry them and them spread the cheese and butter mixture thickly into the separate stalks.  'Reassemble' the stalks into a celery bunch and then wrap it.  After it has cooled in the refrigerator, take it out and slice it in very thin rounds and then place onto toasted rounds of bread.  Decorate this creation to look very grown up! 

There you have it.  Two recipes for celery (a vegetable by the way) served at different times in our American history in two very different manners.  And what do we use it for today?  Crudite.  If we have kids we smear peanut butter in it and call it a snack and if we're super creative in the kitchen we use it in stuffing, soups and to add crunch to chicken, egg or tuna salad!  The days of 'Celery Cutlets' are long gone and that's a shame.  But the way the economy is going...


Anyway, here's a cute Sesame Street clip featuring 'Captain Vegetable' and Celery - of course!