If anyone is looking for another celery use, I stumbled across this recipe last night and made it to have for lunch today. It is quite good! Chinese Celery Salad Try serving this simple Asian-inspired salad with cold sesame noodles or stir-fried chicken with peanuts. From the book "Mad Hungry," by Lucinda Scala Quinn (Artisan Books). Mad Hungry, October 2010 http://www.marthastewart.com/349639/chinese-celery-salad 0Rated(0) Yield Serves 4 to 6 Ingredients 1 bunch of celery, top and bottom removed, stalks separated and cut in half lengthwise 1 tablespoon rice vinegar or white vinegar 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil 4 tablespoons soy sauce 2 dashes Chinese chili oil or hot sauce (optional) 1/2 teaspoon sugar 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (optional) Directions 1.Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the celery and blanch for 2 minutes. Remove, rinse, and cool. Peel off the fibrous strings. Cut the celery into bite-sized pieces. 2.In a bowl, whisk together the vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, chili oil, if using, sugar, and cilantro, if using. Toss in the celery. Cover and refrigerate to cool before serving.

Cooking2day, I'd love to send you spare change, except I put all mine into pig feed, so I can make sausage. (grin) I get casings from Butcher-Packer, based on Detroit and price depends on size. I can get about that amount (the site says it will stuff between 45 and 60 pounds) in 20 mm sheep casings for $35.50, 22 mm sheep casings are $40.50, 24 mm sheep casings are $44.67, but the 24 mm sheep Vienna sausage casings are $60.50. The hog casings are anywhere from $3.50 for enough to stuff 25 pounds, all the way up to $25 or so for larger sausage. I'll attach a link. malna, that's funny, Elery just found that site this morning and emailed it to me, since he uses an iPod and I do better with the desktop and the BIG screen, LOL. I'm old and set in my ways, plus I can print from mine! I still need to try sleevendog's sausage recipe that I saved from the past thread, the one for boudin. Here I'm lucky. I have some sandy soil and some red clay but largely I have a nice loam, a mix of everything. Every fall I add a nice layer of cow manure and stuff from the chicken coop, along with whatever kitchen compost has been mixed in. I mulch plants with old hay, straw, chopped leaves, etc. The manure layer sits on top and gets worked in every spring before planting. I don't use any chemical fertilizers/ etc and the only problems I really encounter is potato bugs, not much wilt or other plant problems. Well, unless you count purslane and lambs quarter as problems, but I react by eating those! Annie

I didn't think so either, about the celery and umami, so I looked it up and it's on a lot of the lists of umami foods. There are specific chemicals that create umami, and also which combine for heightened flavor. Generally, what creates it in vegetables is glutamate (glutamic acid). An article ranking foods' glutamate content had celery as "low", but it was still enough to be listed. Another article that was mostly over my head on biochemical compounds listed the combination of mirepoix and beef as a "synergistic" umami situation, where the specific combination brings heightened umami through the relationships between the glutamate in the veg and the "---tides" in the meat. Or something like that. Personally, I don't find celery to have that "earthiness" that is often a descriptor of umami, that is obvious in tomatoes, mushrooms, parmesan and browned beef, but there are at least a dozen kinds of umami. BTW, there was also a study about the relative umami in different parts of the tomato, and it said something important. I've always wondered why people seeded tomatoes for cooking, because they were throwing away so much flavor. Science shows I'm right. :) Apparently, that's where a large part of the umami is!

Oh I forgot about cukes! They are very nice, chopped, in all kinds of salads. When I did eat tuna, I would add the chopped apples, along w/ onion, lemon or lime juice & mayo - and celery too - sometimes bell peppers. Nowadays I too have switched to salmon instead of tuna. I make salad w/ chopped parsley, green onion & leaf celery, dijon, mayo and eat it w/ celery sticks. I like to add a few drops of smoke flavoring too.