Celery!

The problem? Celery is expensive. And it’s a complete pain in the ass. Once you’ve spent $1.89 easily, sure, for a bunch of celery, you’ve got to get it home, and I don’t need to tell you that you’re wiped out after all that shopping so the celery just goes right into the crisper where it’s easily forgotten.

But you can’t forget it, because if you don’t deal with your celery quickly, why, you’ve got yourself a bunch of limp celery and you’ve just pissed away $1.89. Unless you’re a pal of mine who – I swear to God above, this is true! – unless you’re a pal of mine who actually likes to eat limp celery. Isn’t that the most disgusting thing you’ve ever heard? I know! What the hell is wrong with her?

Okay, okay, we’ve all had a good laugh at her expense, but let’s knock it off now.

So you’ve got to pull that celery back out of the crisper before it goes limp. You’ve got less than two days, probably, and that clock is ticking, brother – it’s ticking! So get to work: pry each stick apart from the wad, wash off the germs of whoever harvested it (Hey, we all have germs, I’m not singling anyone out.), chop off the greenery at the top and the whitery at the base; and then measuring twice but cutting once, divide each piece into lengths short enough to fit in your celery receptacle – some sort of plastic tub with a lid.  Now you fill that container with some water around the celery sticks, put the top on, and stick it in the fridge.  Stop the clock! They won’t go limp now.

Your celery is now ready for whenever you need a quick, healthy snack. And when you want that quick, healthy snack, what you do, see, is you look in the fridge and make a point to ignore that plastic container of celery like you don’t see it, close the refrigerator door, and then opt for some cookies instead, because as long as you don’t have too many, well, they’re not that bad.

Eventually, your celery is pushed way to the back of the fridge, all but forgotten behind eight pounds of government cheese, and then one day, many weeks later, you’ll want a tuna fish sandwich. By the way, why do we put the qualifier “fish” at the end?  Is there such a thing as “tuna pork”? Ooh, hold it Ted, you save that gem for a future post. Anyway, you want a little chopped celery in your tuna fish sandwich, in your tuna salad there, sure.

So you pull out that forgotten container of celery and this is what you see.
Warning: Graphic Images!

Well, graphic image, singular. And you can’t even see the slimy scum in the cloudy water. But believe me – it’s slimy, scummy, and cloudy.

What I’d like to know is why it’s perfectly legal for a homeless person to buy a loose cigarette at the local liquor store for, what is it, probably a quarter or fifty cents, but the grocery store refuses to sell me a single stick of celery for my damn tuna fish?  I don’t need a whole bunch, a whole wad of celery, I just need one freaking stick. Let’s face it, I was never going to “snack” on celery anyway, not even if I opened that door to find Lenny Weinrib himself had come back to life, flown up from Santiago, Chile and was singing and dancing next to the milk and eggs. What kind of idiot snacks on celery? I just bought it because eventually I was at some point going to make tuna fish for lunch, and now that plan is completely shot to hell, isn’t it?

Well, I guess we’ll just have to go to KFC again today. Hey, on the way back, we’ll stop at Wendy’s for Frosties!

Posted by Ted on July 27, 2011, 9:00 AM.