Growing up in the 70s and 80s, we often dined on TV dinners, macaroni and cheese in the box, spaghettis and raviolis a la Chef Boy-ar-Dee, and even powdered milk. Our mother, who grew up on a farm, was a very good cook and made delicious roasts, casseroles and desserts, but the novelty, ease and convenience of pre-packaged foods must have appealed to her. After all, she was a working mom with five (5!) kids at home. Making life easier was quite understandable, especially in those days, when every other television commercial promoted some type of ready-made meal for overworked housewives and mothers. It was an era when processed, frozen, packaged and canned foods were promoted as healthy, delicious alternatives.
There were repercussions, though I grew up quite sturdy and strong. When I was 21, I tasted fresh garlic for the first time. This seems crazy to me now! I don't recall ever seeing fresh garlic in our home, so I questioned my friend Sharon who was cooking a breakfasty meal at 2:00 a.m. (after an evening out) regarding that small, lumpy, white vegetable that looked like an onion separated into perfect little sections. Somewhat surprised, she queried, "You've never tasted fresh garlic?" No, I answered, because we had only garlic salts and garlic powders at our house growing up, available in small jars that were always on the stove or spice rack, or next to the grill for seasoning hamburgers.
There were winks, laughs and then great silence as I was handed a clove of garlic to bite into. Scharf! It was so hot my eyes watered, and now I understood the joke. And I was immediately educated.
These days, there is so much more information available about superfoods like Knoblauch, about what foods are good for you, and the ones that aren't so good. Thanks to the internet, all we have to do is googlen, and online we can locate information about almost any food (or any thing, for that matter).
Being in Europe, I've come across more vegetables than I ever knew existed, and this isn't only due to my lack of exposure during childhood. There are vegetables and fruits we never saw in the grocery store back home, or they were too strange or not needed by our mother during grocery shopping, so they were overlooked or ignored.
A perfect example is celery. In Germany, Sellerie is something quite different than the long, crunchy stalks of green, stringy vegetable that sat next to the carrot sticks on every veggie platter at every potluck and family gathering in the USA.
"Sellerie bei uns ist immer rund, dieser Ball," clarifies Heinie. "Eine Knolle -- Knollensellerie."
Sellerie in the tuber or root form (Knolle = tuber or tubercle) (photo below) is a staple in German cooking and can be found in every grocery store: big, pale, dirty and round. Chunks of Sellerie can also found in Suppengrüne, the very inexpensive (less than one euro) sampling of vegetables wrapped and sold together for making soup. Suppengrüne are also found in every market and with a bit of chicken make a wonderful vegetable soup. Who says you can't eat well for next to nothin'?
What is this ugly thing? Not an alien or malignant growth, but celery root, or Sellerie.
But you don't want that dirty brown vegetable. You're looking for the celery we grew up with, in the form of long stalks or sticks. These, calledStaudensellerie or Stangensellerie in German, are less common strangely.enough, and harder to find. At Aldi, where I can usually find the green celery I know and love, it's sold from the same bin as the fennel, so it has to share a price tag. It's not a product in great demand, obviously.
Because celery is one of those negative-calorie foods, I like to include it in my diet whenever possible. According to Google, "the benefits of celery begin with it being an excellent source of antioxidants and beneficial enzymes, in addition to vitamins and minerals such as vitamin K, vitamin C, potassium, folate and vitamin B6." Question: is that the green stuff or the dirty white part of the celery plant? Perhaps both. Who knew it was so nutritious?
No matter what, I have learned here in Germany that Sellerie is a vital addition to any vegetable soup I make. I can't explain what it does for the taste of my soups, because it is not so distinctive. My sister Karen would have something to say about the taste of celery salt on coleslaw, which she likens to something familiar to her, but that is a subject for another time. What I do know is that Sellerie in both forms gives my soup more body and a special flavor I never experienced as a child, except perhaps from soup in a can -- something I now make every effort to avoid.
There is no shame in that: Mom would be proud that I can make my soup from scratch, with real garlic cloves and other fresh vegetables that I never knew existed.
Chopped Sellerie is important for a tasty vegetable soup.
Wörterbuch / Dictionary
googlen - to Google
(der) Knoblauch - garlic
(die) Knolle - tuber, tubercle; also potato
(die) Knollensellerie - celery root
scharf - spicy, hot
(der) Sellerie - celery (root)
(die) Stangensellerie, Staudensellerie - celery stalks
(die) Suppengrüne - soup-making greens / vegetables: usually leek, parsley, celery root and carrots
