In Which I Defeat My Celery Fear

Okay, a lot has changed since my last post. I'm now living in Washington, on an island near Victoria, Canada. This means I finally have to grocery shopping for myself. And since I'm a procrastinator, I usually put this off for a while.

So I've started cooking like the Marines: no ingredient left behind. Which is sometimes a challenge, especially given my aversion to some things.

Today's aversion ingredient: celery. Almost all the vegetarian/g-f options I was finding for celery were related to pot-pie imitations. I can't eat a lot of the stuff in that, but decided to base my lunch off of this concept.

So here's the recipe:

3 red potatoes
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
1 medium/largish carrot, thinly sliced
2 tbsp garlic, minced
1/3 cup frozen peas
2 tbsp mild olive oil
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried french thyme

1. Microwave potatoes (after stabbing) for ~5min, or until tender/cooked
2. At the same time, heat olive oil and garlic in a skillet for a minute or two
3. Add in carrot and celery, cook for 4-5 minutes
4. Take potatoes out of microwave and carefully (they're hot!) dice them in 1/2" cubes
5. Add potatoes to skillet and mix well to coat with oil and cook for 7-10 minutes
6. Add in frozen peas and cover pan and cook until peas are no longer frozen.
7. Serve on plate

It turned out well, and the celery is still crunchy but not overwhelmingly celery-y. I'm impressed, actually. Actually, after this meal, I think I may finally have found a way to cook celery I enjoy. This recipe was missing an onion (sign #1 you're over-due for a grocery-store trip: you've run out of onions), but I don't think it suffered for it.

Let me know if you try it!

--m