I have hated celery for years. As a child, I never liked any of the standard 1970s snack preparations: celery stick with peanut butter, celery stick with cream cheese, celery stick with dip. BLECH.
Readers of this site may recall that in recent years I have come to enjoy celery, even raw celery, in certain preparations — notably the celery and pressed tofu salad in certain Chinese restaurants. (RIP Wing’s Kitchen *sob*)
With this newly-opened mind, I decided that for my most recent cocktail party I’d put my oft-used green-olive cream cheese spread into celery sticks for a fancier presentation. I tried piping it with a big star tip but that was a non-starter so I snipped the end off the ziplock and piped it that way. Much more successful, if perhaps a little more rustic than I’d imagined. I figured other people would like it, but I’d probably not dig it so much.
WRONG.
The olive-pimento-parsley flavors in the cream cheese are great with the savory celery. The whole thing is like a crunchy martini in your mouth. Love them, and have been eating a couple before starting dinner prep every night this week. Yum!
Who knew?