The Art of Respawning Celery

I was a busy bee this weekend.  I canned for HOURS.  My feet were killing me; it brought about flashbacks of waitressing.  I felt like a wounded war veteran, remembering the horrors bestowed upon me.

In fact, canning is a bit like waitressing.  Even if you enjoy it, it's often hard to get yourself going.  Sometimes You swear during the process and promise yourself that you're really going to quit doing this crap.  By the end you are sweaty, somewhat stinky, almost always covered in food and with aching feet.  But once you have your pocket of balled up money, or your washer/dryer topped with beautiful jars of goodies (respectively) you realize it's all worth it.  I heard someone else relating it to childbirth, and I'd stand by that one, too.

Anyway, above is the haul of my weekend project.  French onion soup, turkey broth, spaghetti sauce, bread and butter pickles, hellish relish, and even some pickled cucamelons.  Sunday night at 10:30 when I finally finished, I told Hubs that he shouldn't expect much in the way of a clean house the next day.  My plan for Monday was to do as little as possible.  I even managed to take a nap!  Ha!  It was like the good ol' days!  (I used to take about 4 naps a day in college.)  The one thing I did have to do yesterday was take my kitties to the vet.  Fun times.

Poose was less than thrilled.  She sat on the console and panted during the trip there.  

She pouted in Boo's carseat on the trip back.

But I digress.  In order to feel somewhat productive yesterday, I decided to try and sprout some celery.  I had to buy a bundle of it in order to make my turkey stock, and my sister had shown me her growth, so I thought I'd give it a go.  There's one thing you should know about me, though.

I kill plants.

Any and all, I never discriminate.  If it's green, I'm mean.  The sad thing is, I love plants!  I like having them in the house to purify the air for the severely allergy ridden family I've collected.  I like having them outside to snip pretty flowers from, or to collect fruit from.  But aside from wisteria and philodendron (which you need a priest and some holy water to get rid of) I am a serial killer.  Practically the Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer of plants.  Well except I don't torture them, nor do I ever mean to kill them!  But you get the drift.

So I thought I'd do what my sis did with her celery, but send her a picture a few days later of how I managed to kill an already dead plant.

However, something strange happened.

It started growing...  You can see the middle nubbin starting to poke up.  Now I contributed this to some fluke in my celery cutting skills.  But by yesterday evening...

Apparently celery grows like a weed.  It "respawns" as my sister calls it.  I wouldn't disagree.  Pretty impressive for 12 hours after cutting, I thought!  

So anyway, I'll keep you updated on my celery spawning project.  I bet this would be a great plant project for young impatient minds.  Also in a few weeks I should have more celery!  (BLECH!  I hate the stuff.  But it is good for cooking and Hubs eats it like it's going out of style)

Yay for accomplishing something on a Monday.  Better than I can say most weeks...

In summary, cut the bottom 2 inches off your celery stalk, stick it in water about halfway up, and go from there.