Marmalade is back and Pickled Celery has arrived

It has become a bi tof a tradition that every winter when the Seville Oranges arrive my mother in law and I get together for a day and make marmalade. It is from a cookbook that her mother had and her mother's mother had before her. The spine is cracked and the pages have yellowed, but the recipe is still as good today as it was the day it was printed.

This year was no different, except this year we weren't just making marmalade for our personal use, this year I was making it in preparation for the farmer's market. I was amazed last year at how many customers loved the flavour of this old fashioned marmalade and was not going to arrive empty handed for this year's market.

But the creating did not stop with marmalade this weekend. I have been working on a recipe for pickled celery for a while now and have landed on a recipe that I think is perfect. I already have some on the shelves that has been aging for a few weeks now and next weekend it will be time to deliver it to The Meat Dept. So get your tastebuds prepared and have clamato juice on hand, because these babies are going to have you craving Worchestershire and Tabasco Sauce!

Pickled Celery fit for a Caesar

I have been told that the worst time to go grocery shopping is when you are hungry because you always leave with more impulse purchases and more food than you actually need. For me, that also applies to when is the worst time to go out for a drink. So to combat the 3 gin n’ tonics in 30 minutes just because you are hungry and are looking for an oral fix, I have always turned to the spicy Caesar when hungry and going to meet someone for an adult beverage.

I consider the Caesar as more of an appetizer and less as a drink. The combination of the thick clamato juice, the horseradish (when available) and the celery stalk turn this delicious beverage into a first course. So you can imagine my shock and dismay when the celery stalk started to disappear from my beloved appetizer and get replaced with a pickled green bean. This might surprise you considering I rave about how great pickled green beans are in a Caeser. They are delicious, but they are just so small and really should NEVER be served in a quantity of one. I am thrilled to try other people’s version of the pickled green bean and crunch away on them happily but also finish wishing there was a second.

This whole conundrum got me thinking of how I could help out the sad little celery and give them back their prized position in the spicy Caesar. I was going to pickle it. I tried a couple of variations before I ended up with this tasty little treat that I now just eat right out of the jar so often that it rarely even makes it into a Caesar ;).