Preserve and Cook #172

Hello friends!

Tis the season of greens! The garden is full of so many kinds of greens… At least here in the South. If you live in colder climates, you are probably a little behind us, but they are coming your way too!

I remember that I used to find myself thinking, “how in the world am I going to preserve all of this goodness?” It can be a bit tricky… The business of preserving greens.

But then my ex-mother-in-law showed me this super simple recipe for pesto, and my life changed forever! Back then, she made it with the classic basil, but over the years I’ve used this recipe with so so many greens!

You can use it to preserve spinach, cilantro, parsley, collards, kale, chard, basil, carrot tops (!), and probably more.

I say preserve because it freezes so well! I make a whole lot of it, add it to small snack cups (these ones < affiliate link) and send them to the freezer. I pull out one cup at a time, place it in the fridge, and it thaws and is ready to use a few hours later.

Click here for the full recipe!

Now, aside from a million different salads, there is one thing that you HAVE to try to make with some of those delicious greens… Patties!

Ok ok, hear me out… This is a bit of an advanced recipe, I’ll admit. It takes a bit of time, especially since there is frying involved, and you need to figure out the consistency of the mixture before frying (I explain all of this in the step-by-step tutorial), but listen to me… Are you listening?

It’s so worth it.

Hands down, this is my favorite vegetarian recipe!

I’ve made it with spinach, chard, beet tops, and this year, I’m going to try it with collards.

» Click here for the step-by-step tutorial and recipe card.

This, in the image above, is my first harvest of celery, you guys! Let’s start way way way back…

You see… 20 years ago, when I landed in this beautiful country with one suitcase and $300, I was so darn excited! America is the land where dreams can actually come true, like actually… (back then, we didn’t have many resources to make big dreams come true in Israel).

Americans had it all figured out! Organized, clean, productive, beautifully taken care of… It just made sense to me. All of it.

Until it didn’t…

A few days after I landed, all fired up and ready to take over the world, I went into the grocery store. And that’s when I saw it.

I thought that something was wrong with my eyes… Can it be? Wait… Who did that? It must not be like that in all the grocery stores, right?

Someone, someone did the unthinkable thing… They took the top of the celery off!!! 😱😱😱 As in, there were no leaves at the top of the stems!

At that exact moment, I wasn’t sure about the future of America as a nation.

We managed since then, thank God, but I found a new purpose: to reintroduce Americans to celery leaves. By God, every American who knows me will eat celery leaves or I’ll die trying to make them.

Problem is… Celery isn’t easy to grow! Oh my, I didn’t know that, but it takes sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long. And all this time, it has to stay cool and cozy. We do not have much cool weather here in NC! We usually go from 40 degrees F to 80 degrees F in a matter of a week.

But, after years of trying different things, I think that I figured it out! Well, I hope so… I lost 100’ of celery this past winter because of the freezing temperatures that we had, but two plants survived and they are talking to me. I harvested these beautiful stalks that you see above a couple of weeks ago, and I think that I have a plan formed for both Fall celery and Spring celery.

So I know things are a bit shaky in the US right now, but I wanted to make sure to let you know that we will be ok. There is a plan, celery is in our future, and therefore, we are all going to be ok!

That’s it for now!

~Lady Lee~