The wonder that is Cutting Celery and other perennials in the garden ......

I love to cook with celery, I always have. It adds that little something to almost everything. It is also considered a negative calorie food, meaning you burn more calories eating it than it contains. What is not to love about that? The downside of conventional celery is two fold for me. First, back when I bought store bought celery I almost always had to freeze the better part of what I had purchased because I rarely managed to use it all before it went bad. The second downside is geographic. I live in Florida which is not the most conducive climate for growing conventional large stalk celery.  A few years back I was introduced to Cutting Celery Apium graveolens var. secalinum. In our area Cutting Celery grows as a perennial year around. The stalks are not as large as conventional celery but work wonderfully in cooking. If you are looking for celery to smear with peanut butter, stick with traditional.

 Here is a shot this morning of the six cutting celery plants in our garden. I harvest fresh for cooking regularly but from time to time need to harvest a lot and dehydrate it. This celery is so prolific doing large harvests to dehydrate is the only way I can keep the celery under a modicum of control. Once dehydrated I grind it into a wonderful celery powder that adds that little something to soups and stews etc.

This mornings initial dehydrator offering.

After trial and error and a little refinement we have found that using our blender is the fastest way to grind dehydrated herbs and veggies. For most we put them directly into a mason jar to grind because the blender base fits right onto the jar. So the herbs are ground in the same jar they will be stored in thus reducing waste and cleanup.

This is a batch of dill that came out of the dehydrator this morning so the celery could go in. 

What perennial herbs or veggies are you growing?