So I ordered 20# of celery seconds. I usually grow my own celery and make celery salt out of some of it, but not this year. This is a sink of 10# of seconds.
The object for Saturday was to get the celery washed, checked for bugs, chopped, blended up, and into the dehydrator.
The cleaned and chopped celery filled this large deep bowl.
The hardest part is getting the trays of slurry all the way from the old kitchen, through a screen door and all the way across the addition and into the dehydrator before it runs off the tray. I only succeeded once out of 8 trips.
Once I’d finally gotten the celery all washed and checked for bugs, then I had to cut away all the bad bits. I finished that around noon.
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I had to stop and get cleaned up to go look at a treadmill I had found on FB Marketplace. It was a very good quality used one for a very reasonable price. Turns out it was part of an estate sale, and older man used it in the winters. It JUST fit into the back of the Subaru.
On the way home we stopped at a couple tag sales. One had just had extensive stonework done by our stone masons also.
Back home we found a friend delivering the milk order and he helped unload the treadmill and get it into the cellar. Thank goodness for him, as my husband’s back is really acting up.
I set about blending up the celery into a slurry. I have an Oster reversing blender and that works well for pulverizing celery. I have to add water unfortunately, and that’s where the problem starts.
I have about 20 seconds to get the tray of slurry into the dehydrator before the water separates and starts running off the tray. When the dehydrators were in the kitchen, it was not such a problem. But across the addition…
I make a LOT of celery salt as my husband dislikes the texture of celery in food. But I like the umami effect that celery has on food. So I use a lot of celery salt in cooking.
Most celery salt is made using celery seed. But I get a far nicer product using old stalks and leaves and sea salt.
The slurry will be in the dehydrator overnight. I use the tray liners and most of the slurry will peel right off. I’ll scrape off what I can of the rest and have to wash up the mess before I can reuse the trays and sheets.
On Sunday we were supposed to move that pasture pen, but between my husband’s back, and all the rest of the celery I have to wash and chop and get into the dehydrator, we are going to push the move off until Monday.
So Sunday I will be back at the sink, processing celery. On Monday, after we move the pen, I will finish the celery salt process.