What a weekend. On Friday, I zoomed six hours southwest to Woodward, Oklahoma, for my grandmother Virginia’s 85th birthday party. On Saturday, I zoomed six hours back to pick up Cookie before the boarder closed, on a different route that was supposed to save me, like, ten minutes. I ended up on a construction detour over red dirt roads and got pulled over for speeding by a policeman in a pick-up truck. (Look, Mom, no ticket!) On Sunday, I hosted the first stop in Ali’s bachelorette party, which concluded with ten girls belting Alanis Morissette lyrics in a private karaoke room. And yesterday, we celebrated Jordan’s soon-to-be-here baby with a decidedly chill baby shower. Today, I’m resisting the urge to pour myself a third cup of coffee.
Surely I’m not the only person who over-indulged this weekend, right? Let’s reset with a simple, inexpensive, and addictive celery salad. I included chopped celery in two salads in my cookbook, but this is my first celery-centric salad. It’s a crisp, refreshing and totally underrated salad ingredient. I found the recipe in a new cookbook called Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables by chef Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg. Kat Sacks from Epicurious sent the book to me so I could participate in this month’s edition of #EpiCookbookClub—each month, Epicurious is selecting a cookbook to cook from, and you can participate by tagging your food photos #EpicCookbookClub on Instagram and Facebook. I love it. I’m quite smitten with Six Seasons. It’s a gorgeous seasonal cookbook that highlights a wide variety of produce and offers inventive recipes for each type. I’ve bookmarked a ton of recipes to try and picked this one to try first, since McFadden said it’s one of his favorite dishes. I’m learning a lot from his produce introductions. For example, in the celery intro, I learned that celery is super-thirsty and needs a lot of attention from growers, which is why you don’t find it often at farmers’ markets. It gets tough and stringy when it’s not consistently and adequately watered. Have you seen heirloom celery varieties in purple or magenta yet? I’m keeping an eye out for them now. Before I go, some updates on Love Real Food:
*Parmesan note: Most Parmesans are not technically vegetarian (they contain animal rennet), but Whole Foods 365 and BelGioioso brands offer vegetarian Parmesans. Change it up: I haven’t tried, but I imagine dried cherries, cranberries or chopped apricots would be nice instead of the dates. I bet walnuts would be good in place of the almonds, too. Make it nut free: Try substituting freshly toasted sunflower seeds in place of the almonds. Make it dairy free/vegan: The Parmesan rounds out the salad’s flavor, but it’s also nice without the cheese. You might finish the salad with some flaky sea salt (Maldon brand) instead.
