Celery

“ Celery is everywhere esteemed, not only as a salad, but as a wholesome and delicious vegetable. The crop requires the very best of cultivation, and care should be taken not to push the growth too far, for the gigantic Celery occasionally seen at Shows has, generally speaking, the quality of size only, being tough and tasteless. ”

“ And what could really be funnier than a human body living before The Great Sun under its frame of wood and glass, all winter and all summer ... strange and bleached-looking, 109like celery, grown almost always under cloth, kept in the kind of cellar of cotton or wool it likes for itself, moving about or being moved about, the way it is, in thousands of queer, dependent, helpless-looking ways? The earth, we can well believe, as we go up and down in it is full of soft laughter at us. ”

“ Again, onions vary so much in size that we cannot draw any hard-and-fast line between a little pickling onion no bigger than a marble and a Spanish onion as big as a baby’s head. It would be possible to be very precise and say, “Take so many ounces of celery, or so many pounds of carrot,” but practically we cannot turn the kitchen into a chemist’s shop. Cooks, whether told to use celery in heads or ounces, would act on guess-work just the same. What are absolutely essential are two things—common sense and experience. ”

“ Unless one has a good cellar in which to bury celery, it is best to purchase as one has need from time to time. Celery is a delicious salad. It is also considered one of the best vegetables that a nervous, rheumatic or neuralgic person can take. The heads should be close and white, and the stalks should break off crisply. ”

“ CELERIAC. This is a variety of the Apium graveolens. It is hollow in the stem, and the roots are particularly large: although this is much used in Germany, it is not so much esteemed by us as the celery.
426. CHAMPIGNON. Agaricus pratensis.—This plant is equal in flavour to the mushroom when boiled or stewed: it is rather dry, and has little or no scent whatever.
427. CHARDOONS. Cynara Cardunculus.—The gardeners blanch the stalks as they do celery; and they are eaten raw with oil, pepper, and vinegar; or, if fancy directs, they are also either boiled or stewed. ”

“ I should have added a fourth to the list of stand-bys—to wit: the vegetable marrow. For some reason, possibly because they are a stubborn and tenacious race, the English persist in looking upon the vegetable marrow as an object designed for human consumption, which is altogether the wrong view to take of it. As a foodstuff this article hasn't even the merit that attaches to stringy celery. You do not derive much nourishment from stale celery, [21] but eating at it polishes the teeth and provides a healthful form of exercise that gives you an appetite for the rest of the meal. ”

“ This is shown in many cultivated vegetables, as celery, lettuces, &c., in which by banking up the celery, or tying together the lettuce, the light is excluded, and the stalks of the one and the heart-leaves of the other become mild and white, whereas the same grown in a state of nature are so green and rank as to be almost poisonous. ”

“ Pound two gills of celery seed, put it into a bottle and fill it with strong vinegar; shake it every day for a fortnight, then strain it, and keep it for use. It will impart a pleasant flavour of celery to any thing with which it is used. A very delicious flavour of thyme may be obtained, by gathering it when in full perfection ”

“ It is hardier than celery, and possesses an advantage in that it can be taken up and stored similarly to carrots and beets. The celerific may be boiled as a table vegetable or used for flavouring soups, or it may be sliced for salads. It does well in all the cooler parts, and might be cultivated with benefit, mingled with gratitude. ”

“ She has planted celery very successfully and says this land is just suited for it, and wants to try a quarter of an acre in it. They are charmed with the ever flowing artesian well and are arranging little ditches to irrigate in dry weather. Altogether I feel so peaceful and content that it is hard to write regularly. ”

“ In the vegetable group we have first, the different parts of many plants, and second, substances manufactured from plants. While we do not usually eat the whole of any one plant, yet there is not any part of the plant that we have not adopted as food. We use roots and tubers in beets, carrots, and potatoes, and the onion is a bulb. In celery and asparagus we eat the plant stalk. ”

“ Sunlight, moreover, has not only this action upon the animal kingdom, but also upon the vegetable world as well Plants, like celery, which are subjected to blanching, become whitened under the process of etiolation. ”

“ If the celery is allowed to remain in the boards too long after it has reached a marketable stage, it loses in weight and flavor and is liable to be injured or even destroyed by the attacks of blight. ”

“ Thus, the Wild Celery, which is certainly poisonous when growing exposed to daylight, becomes most palatable, and even beneficial, by having its edible leaf stalks earthed up and bleached during their time of cultivation. ”

“ To know, for example, that the endless variety of colour which we see in plants is developed only by the rays of the sun, is to know a truism sublime by its very comprehensiveness. The cause of the whiteness of celery is nothing more than the want of light in its vegetation, and in order that this effect may be produced, the plant is almost wholly covered with earth; the tops of the leaves alone being suffered to appear above the ground.
CHANTILLY SOUP. 123. INGREDIENTS.—1 quart of young green peas, a small bunch of parsley, 2 young onions, 2 quarts of medium stock No. ”

“ Celery is another, the stalks of which are chiefly used, made white by trenching up the earth about them. The stalks of angelica are used differently.
Har. I know how—candied.
Tut. Yes. Then there are many of which the seeds are used. There is caraway.
Har. What, the seeds that are put into cakes and comfits?
Tut. Yes. They are warm and pungent to the taste; and so are the seeds of many others of the umbelliferous plants, as coriander, fennel, wild carrot, angelica, anise, cummin, and dill. All these are employed in food or medicine, and are good in warming or strengthening the stomach. ”

“ Vegetables.—Artichokes, beans, beetroot, cabbages, carrots, cauliflowers, celery, cresses, cucumbers, endive, leeks, lettuce, mushrooms, parsnips, peas, spinach, sprouts, tomatoes, turnips, vegetable marrows, watercress.
Fruit.—Apples, apricots, bananas, cherries (morella) , cob-nuts, damsons, figs, filberts, grapes, melons, medlars, nectarines, oranges, peaches, pears, pines, plums, quinces, walnuts. ”

“ So the beef and butter that were grass and, before that earthy matter, and the wheat that was once partly mineral, turns at last into rosy flesh and blood for you who read this lesson. Well! Well! There are many wonders in this world!
If all plants liked and used the same food, our food would be too much of one kind. But as plants eat many kinds of minerals, through them we receive material to build all parts of our bodies. We need lime for our bones. We need sugar. We need salt in our bodies. Plants eat from the soil lime, salt, chalk, iron, and many other minerals. ”

“ CEREALS.—Cereals are cultivated grasses, the seeds of which are used for food. The most important are wheat, Indian corn or maize, rice, oats, rye, and barley. From these many different kinds of flours, meals, and breakfast foods are prepared.
Cereals rank high in nutritive value. Many of them contain about 75 per cent of starch. They also contain ash and a substance which builds the body. Because they are widely distributed in various climates, they have an important place in man's diet. ”

“ The apple tree was made from this juice which we call sap. This sap is the blood of the plant. It makes the plant grow just as your blood makes you grow.
The sap came to the little apple plant all the time it was growing. But where did the plant get the sap?
The food of a plant lies all about its roots. The rain, or water from your watering pot, falls around the plant. It sinks into the ground. Then the water dissolves the earth just as it dissolves sugar. ”

“ A great many compound products are obtained from the vegetable kingdom. We need merely recall to the reader’s recollection starch, resin, camphor, bland and aromatic oils, bitter principles, colouring matters, the acids of the grape, the lemon, and the apple, &c. to assure him of this truth. All these different substances form themselves out of the sugar and gum of the ascending sap, together with the carbon absorbed under the influence of light. ”

“ Fig. 796.—Three-celled capsule.
Fruit, in botany, is by no means limited to the juicy products of trees or plants which are so refreshing in the summer weather, and so acceptable in any form. In plant life the herb yielding seed produces a fruit equally with the orange or the apple. The fruit is the outcome of the varied processes of the plant. We may trace the plant from its tiny, sometimes very minute seed, through stem to flower and seed again. ”

“ The fruit is of the shape of a melon, rather longer for its thickness; within are black seeds in each of the cells, into which it is divided, and round them a white substance, very like fine sugar, which is sweet, with a small degree of very pleasant acid. ”

“ This great variety in different things is a distribution due to nature, for even the human body, which consists in part of the earthy, contains many kinds of juices, such as blood, milk, sweat, urine, and tears. If all this variation of flavours is found in a small portion of the earthy, we should not be surprised to find in the great earth itself countless varieties of juices, through the veins of which the water runs, and becomes saturated with them before reaching the outlets of springs. ”

“ Cereal comes to us from Ceres, the Roman goddess of corn and flowers, and panic is from Pan, a Greek Nature-god, who was regarded as the protector of flocks and herds. But here the resemblance ends; for not only is one Latin and the other Greek, but one is the name of an object which we can touch and see, while the other relates to that inner world of human consciousness which cannot be grasped with hands. ”

“ Perhaps, however, the point which most clearly proves the purely functional origin of fruits is found in the immense variety of their structure, a variety far surpassing that of any other vegetable organ. It does not matter at all what portion of the seed-covering or its adjacent parts happens first to show the tendency toward succulence, sweetness, fragrance, and brilliancy. It serves the attractive purpose equally well whether it be calyx, or stalk, or skin, or receptacle. ”

“ In botany we have no such word as fruit. What you call fruit is in some trees the seed. In all species of nuts, for instance, the fruit and the seed are one and the same thing—that is to say, the kernel of the nut is both fruit and seed. ”

“ Orchard fruits are conveniently divided into large and small fruits, the large fruits being represented by the apple, pear, peach, quince, etc., and the small fruit by the cherry and plum. Fruits were doubtless among the earliest foods of man, and this leads to another classification of fruits, namely, wild and cultivated. ”

“ For the crystal of salt grows by taking to itself the salt contained in the brine, which is added to its exterior; whereas the plant grows by addition to its interior: and there is not a trace of the characteristic compounds of the plant’s body, albumin, gluten, starch, or cellulose, or fat, in the soil, or in the water, or in the air. ”

“ The vegetable absorbs from the earth and from the air substances existing in their natural condition—that is, united according to their strongest affinities. These substances are chiefly water, containing various mineral salts in solution, from the ground, and carbonic acid from the air. ”

“ The use of cherries is to produce cherry blossoms; just as the use of bulbs is to produce hyacinths,—not of hyacinths to produce bulbs. Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, or root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show you at once how immaterial the seed-forming function is to the flower's existence. A flower is to the vegetable substance what a crystal is to the mineral. ”

“ But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,—who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time to apricots, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, raspberries, melons, figs both yellow and purple, early apples, and grapes of three kinds? ”

“ Fruit medium, turbinate, or globular-turbinate, usually regular in contour; skin rather fine and tender, clear and bright green, sprinkled with gray-green dots; at maturity the green becomes clear lemon and golden on the side of the sun; flesh white, fine, very melting, full of juice, acidulous, delicately perfumed ”

“ When the heat has assimilated the moisture, it will, as a result, rise upward, carrying the juice with it, and the air and sun will draw it out, and the oily juice which forms the fruit will come out, while the moisture will produce the leaves, leaves and fruit coming forth together. ”

“ The fruit that follows is yellow, being near ripe, and covered with a white freeze, or cotton; thick set on the younger, and growing less as they grow to be thorough ripe, bunched out oftentimes in some places, some being like an apple, and some a pear, of a strong heady scent, and not durable to keep, and is sour, harsh, and of an unpleasant taste to eat fresh; but being scalded, roasted, baked, or preserved, becomes more pleasant. ”

“ The various secretions of vegetables, as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop-plant into a bitter juice ”