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Frozen Celery

What To Do With Leftover Celery

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I don’t often cook with a lot of celery, and I always seem to have some leftover this time of year after making stuffing and gravy.

Instead of letting it languish in the back of your fridge (until you have to throw it away) you can freeze it and use it in future dishes. There are just two things you need to remember with frozen celery.

1. Don’t let it defrost before cooking with it or it will brown. Add it straight from the freezer to the pan. It’s still edible when it turns brown, just not so pretty. If you need to dice the frozen celery further before cooking, try and do it quickly so that the celery doesn’t have time to defrost before it hits the pan.

2. You can use frozen celery in any recipe that calls for cooking celery, it’s not so great in recipes that call for raw celery (like potato salad) because frozen celery will lacks the color and crunch of fresh celery.
I’ve even used frozen celery to make dairy and gluten free clam chowder and it came out great.

You can also add some frozen celery to a pot with some diced onion, sliced carrot, leftover chicken, broth and cooked brown rice or gluten free noodles for a quick and tasty chicken soup. Its also great in minestrone or other vegetable soups.

Directions

1. Wash and slice the celery into ½ inch thick slices. They look like beautiful little crescent moons this way, and the size makes it easy to add to recipes. I also love when little bits of chopped celery leaves peeking out of dishes because they make any dish a little prettier and cheerier.

2. Place the celery into a Ziploc bag and freeze flat.

When you want to use the celery, just break off as much celery as you need in the recipe and put the rest back into the freezer. Ta da! No more wasted celery!

 

 

gravy

Gorgeous Gravy – The Best Vegan And Gluten Free Gravy Recipe

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This is hands down the best gravy I’ve ever had. It’s totally vegan, and incredibly delicious.

It has all the flavors that you want in a gravy. The browned mushrooms give it a deep savory richness. The sage and the other spices give it that special Thanksgiving charm, and the oat flour gives the gravy a velvety, creamy, buttery texture with out any dairy.

I promise that you won’t miss the chicken stock or the butter.

It’s great served over mashed potatoes, turkey and stuffing, but delicious enough to be eaten on it’s own. You can double or triple the recipe and serve it with sautéed mushrooms as a creamy mushroom soup, or serve it over pasta for something like a creamy mushroom alfredo sauce.

I would add just a pinch more salt to this myself, but I like things more on the savory side. Some people like things less salty, and leaving that extra little bit of salt out gives your guests a little more wiggle room as far as the savory level of their gravy is concerned.

This recipe works well with lots of different dietary restrictions, but if you know that one of your guests has celiac disease, then be sure to use certified gluten free oats. Oats are naturally gluten free, but normal oats from bulk bins can sometimes be processed on the same equipment as normal flour, and can contain trace amounts of gluten.

You can make this gravy ahead of time, and just reheat it right before serving. One less (delicious) thing to worry about cooking on Thanksgiving is something to be thankful for indeed.

Gorgeous Gravy
Makes 2 cups

Prep time – 5 min
Cook Time – 30 min
Total Time – 1 hr 20 min

Ingredients

1 2/3 cup diced mushrooms (about 5 white or crimini mushrooms)

¾ cup diced onion (about ½ a medium onion)

1 tbsp. diced celery

7 tbsp. olive oil

¼ cup oat flour *

2 cups water

 

½ + 1/8 tsp. sea salt

¼ tsp. black pepper

¼ + 1/8 tsp. dried rubbed sage

¼ tsp. dried thyme

3 tsp. finely chopped fresh parsley.


Instructions

1. Sauté the mushrooms over medium high heat with 4 tbsp of olive oil for about 8 – 10 minutes until the mushrooms have become golden brown around the edges. Pour the mushrooms and olive oil into a bowl and set aside.

2. Allow the pan to cool off the heat for 10 minutes. The onions and celery will cook more evenly if they are allowed to start off cooking from a cool pan.

3. Add the onions and celery into the cooled pan along with another 3 tbsp of olive oil. Cook the onions and celery over medium high heat for 3-4 minutes. Then turn the heat down to medium and cook for another 3 minutes until the vegetables are softened.

4. Add the oat flour into the celery and onions and cook for 3 minutes, stirring the mixture as it cooks.

5. Add the 2 cups of water and the cooked mushrooms to the pan and turn the heat up to medium high. Cook uncovered for about 8 minutes until the mixture has thickened, stirring frequently. Don’t worry if the gravy looks a little lumpy right now, the blender will smooth that all out.

6. Take the pan off the heat, and let the gravy cool for 30 minutes.

Caution when blending hot liquids – remove the little clear plastic cap off the top of the blender lid (the lid’s center insert) and put a folded towel over the top, then blend.

If you don’t allow the blender to vent steam while blending hot liquids, pressure can build up and the blender contents can explode. Taking the center insert off the lid, and using the folded towel should prevent this from happening.

Add the gravy to the blender, and blend until smooth. Add in the the salt, pepper, sage, parsley and thyme and give the gravy a quick blitz to stir in the spices, but still allow some green from the fresh parsley to show through in the final gravy.

You can stash this in the fridge overnight and then reheat the gravy in a saucepan over medium heat right before serving.

Notes – * I grind oats into oat flour using a blender. Don’t grind the oats in a food processor because the flour won’t be fine enough.

Any extra oat flour I don’t use in the recipe goes into an airtight container and I use it for another recipe.

cornbread dressing - stuffing

Southern Style Cornbread Dressing – Gluten and Dairy Free Stuffing Recipe

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There are many types of incredible stuffing, but Southern Style Cornbread Dressing is my absolute favorite. The taste of this brings back so many happy memories of friends and family over the years, and always brings a smile to my face. It’s slightly crispy on the top and moist and creamy in the middle, and it’s definitely a crowd-pleaser.

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You can either bake this in a muffin tin (will make 12 muffin size portions of stuffing) or bake it in a 13 x 9 casserole dish. The baking time will be the same either way. I would use the muffin pan if you’re planning on making the stuffing ahead or want to freeze individual portions to enjoy later.

Southern Style Cornbread Dressing – Gluten Free
Makes 4-6 servings

Adapted from this recipe.

For the Cornbread

Ingredients

¼ level cup + 1/3 level cup of oat flour*

1 level cup + 3 tbsp. of cornmeal **

¾ level tsp. baking soda

1 tbsp. ground flax seed (or add another ½ a beaten egg to the wet ingredients)

4.5 tbsp. avocado oil – or any neutral flavored oil

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar)

1 ½ tsp. maple syrup

1 cup of water

1 egg

 

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 425. Grease and flour a 8 x 8 baking dish with oat flour and any neutral flavored oil.

2. Sift the cornmeal, oat flour, baking soda, and ground flax seed in a large mixing bowl.

3. Stir together the wet ingredients until well combined. Add the wet into the dry and stir to combine. Pour into the 8×8 baking dish.

4. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes until golden brown. Set the cornbread aside to cool.

Notes – * I grind oats into oat flour using a blender. Don’t grind the oats in a food processor because the flour won’t be fine enough.

Any extra oat flour (or ground flax seed) I don’t use in the recipe goes into an airtight container and I use it for another recipe.

**If you’re allergic to corn, you could try substituting brown rice flour for the cornmeal at a 1:1 ratio. I didn’t test this recipe specifically with this substitution, so I’m not 100% sure this will work, but last year I made a cornbread dressing with brown rice flour instead of cornmeal and it came out great. You couldn’t tell the difference at all.

 

For the Cornbread Dressing

3 tbsp. olive oil

½ cup diced onion

¾ cup diced celery

1 egg

2 cups of chicken broth (homemade or store bought)

¾ tsp. pepper

¾ tsp. dried rubbed sage

¼ + 1/8 tsp. sea salt

Instructions

1. Sauté the diced onion and celery in the olive oil over medium heat until tender, about 12 minutes.

2. Add the sage and sauté 1 minute longer.

3. Crumble the cornbread into a large mixing bowl. Add the cooked vegetables, salt, pepper, sage and chicken broth to the mixture. Taste for seasoning, and add more salt and pepper if needed.

4. Stir in the beaten egg, then cover and chill the mixture overnight (at least 8 hours).

5. Preheat the oven to 375. Grease and flour your muffin tin or 13 x 9 baking dish with oil and oat flour. Pour the mixture into the pan and bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on top.

If your making this in a muffin pan, let the stuffing cool in the muffin pan for 30 -45 minutes so that the stuffing has some time to firm up and hold it’s shape. Run a butter knife around the edges to loosen them, pop the stuffing muffins out and refrigerate. Reheat them to serve.

If you’re putting a dish straight from the fridge into the oven, put the fridge-cold dish into the cold oven (so that the ceramic dish does shatter from the temperature change between the cold fridge and the hot oven). Then preheat your oven with the dish inside so that it warms up with the oven and bake as usual.

You can reheat any leftover stuffing by covering the dish tightly with foil, and baking at 300 degrees for 45 minutes until warmed through.

roasted sweet potatoes

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

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Roasted sweet potatoes are surprising versatile and super simple to make.

I roasted sweet potatoes a number of ways until I found Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipe for roasted sweet potatoes in her book It’s All Good.

This is a version of her recipe. I added the olive oil to crisp up the skin, and also put the sweet potatoes on a sheet pan (instead of roasting them directly on a baking rack) just for the sake of easy clean up.

I usually roast 4-5 of them at a time on a stainless steel baking sheet or a large glass pyrex dish, and they make a quick snack when I’m hungry but a little too tired to think to hard about what I want to eat. They usually get sweeter when they are refrigerated overnight. For a quick snack, I sprinkle them with a little cinnamon, and maybe a drizzle of little maple syrup if I’m craving something sweet

The cheapest place that I found organic sweet potatoes was at Costco (they don’t always have them) but you can get a 10 lb bag of them for around $11. Trader Joes almost always have them year round, and they are a little more expensive than Costco, but much cheaper than anywhere else.

You can puree them and use them to make my pumpkin tarts, mash them with some cinnamon and maple syrup, or add them to my vegan cheddar bay biscuits (recipe coming soon!).

Ingredients

4-5 sweet potatoes

½ – 1 tsp olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 425.

2. Give the sweet potatoes a good scrub. Pat them dry with a paper towel and prick them 4-5 times with a fork.

3. Rub the olive oil over the sweet potatoes, place them on a baking sheet or pyrex dish and roast for 1 hr.

4. If the sweet potatoes are thicker than 2 inches in diameter, cook them for an addition 15 -30 minutes until cooked through and you can pierce them with a paring knife with no resistance.

To clean up the caramelized/ blackened sweet potato goo, soak the pan or baking sheet overnight. Pour off the water and make paste from a little baking soda and dish soap. Use a scrubby sponge and baking soda paste to scrub off any of the remaining sweet potato goo.