Last week, I ordered celery stalks through my on-line Bio store. Delivered instead was a hairy ball that reminded me of Wilson from the Cast Away film. Turns out I received celery root instead.

Not having much practise cooking with celery root in the past, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. But, I needed celery for my cabbage rolls, so I decided to use it instead of the planned celery stalks. It took a little longer to cook, as I wanted to make sure the pieces were soft. But in the end, it added a nice, slightly more intense celeriac flavour to the finished dish! Sometimes the universe sends us what we didn’t request for a reason.

Last night was another Quer durch den Kühlschrank (through the fridge) night, with a lot of bits of this and that to use up. Another perfect excuse for soup, starting with the leftover celery root. While chopping it up, I heard the sound of a chainsaw outside my window. At first I was annoyed by the loud, screeching noise. But suddenly a childhood memory came to mind. I was standing in my parent’s backyard, holding pieces of wood while my dad sawed them up for our fireplace. It was a seasonal chore that I detested (and reminded my dad of that every year). But thinking back now, it was actually my first introduction to meditation, as I was forced to think of nothing as the sound of the chainsaw prevented any sort of conversation or a thought to remain in your head. And, my work contributed to the family by helping to keep us warm in the winter. Something you really don’t appreciate until you are older.

∞

I sautéed the celery root in butter along with chopped onions and carrots. When soft, I added in a few bulbs of chopped garlic, and tossed in some leftover chopped cabbage and arugula. I also found leftover zucchini that had been seasoned with fresh herbs, garlic and olive oil and grilled on the BBQ. A perfect addition to add some kick, especially since I didn’t have chicken stock on hand. After everything was mixed together and the garlic fragrant, I mixed some chicken bouillon (without MSG) into boiling water and added it to the ingredients to simmer. I then slipped in leftover tofu from our sushi dinner on the week-end to hopefully achieve a silky end result.

After the tofu warmed up, I pureed the soup and added a little yogurt to give the soup some final zing. The texture was very creamy, and all the veggies blended quite nicely, including the arugula. It was a soup I’ll likely never be able to duplicate, but that’s the fun in making soup with what’s available in your fridge.

I think the star of the show was Wilson.