It’s party season! I’m working on a new book, which will be out – I hope – this time next year. So I’m not going out to dine nearly so much, and I’m not going to theater nearly so much as I normally do. But family life goes on, and I recently returned from a food-laden run to southeast Georgia (pecan country!) where we fed 40 people or so for a baby shower. So I’m going to share some of those recipes with you.
I found this on the web – it’s in many places – and is certainly low-carbohydrate. Not my bag, but YMMV. Still, it tastes good, and is a nice change to the celery stuffed with pimiento cheese often found.
Please be sure everything in the stuffing is at room temperature. I put the dry ingredients in a small clean spice jar, kept the crumbled bacon and, in a separate little container, the bacon grease in the cooler as I drove, and it all worked well – I zapped the bacon grease briefly to liquefy it when I was putting the stuffing together at my daughter’s.
1 head of celery
1-8oz block of cream cheese, softened
1 cup chopped dill pickles – I used dill relish
1 Tbs of the juice
1/2 tsp salt
6 strips of bacon cooked until crisp and broken up into small pieces (or chopped before frying)
3 Tbsp of the bacon grease (can substitute mayonnaise, but why?)
3/4 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp parsley – I used dried
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp dried or fresh dill
Cut off about an inch of the bottom of the head of celery. (Discard or wash and toss in freezer with other vegetable scraps for stock.) Wash the celery stalks. Set aside for the moment.
Mix together the cream cheese and the remainder of the ingredients. Mixture will be stiff. You may use a pastry tube to fill the celery, but it will need to have a wide-diameter nozzle. I went with a spoon.
Decide how long you want the pieces of celery to be. I recall a few folks who went for the dramatic whole-stalk thing when I was a kid, but four inches or less is a little more workable. We went for somewhere between an inch and a half and two inches, just because there was lots of finger food that was going to go on these plates. Stuff celery generously, and be prepared for non-stuffed-celery eaters to smile and snatch a few more pieces.
Yield: It’s up to you.
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