TheSnackHound.com is proud to present a rare interview.
The only way to segue to this once in a lifetime interview is to tell you about what happened leading up to it. It was an ordinary day. In fact, it was just last week. The fridge was on the light side, as all the leftovers, planned overs, and holiday treats had been demolished. I spied a lone German Shortbread cookie that I proceeded to indulge myself with. Being a few weeks old, one may question my decision, but since Grandma had made it, it comes with magical powers that made it much better than any other identical cookie birthed by another baker, so the shelf life on it was “Forever.” Having throughly been on my way to my system digesting every last crumb, I made my expedition around the fridge, uncovering ancient artifacts such as half empty jelly that expired last year. No, it is not a “New Year’s” joke as it did not expire in December, but actually a full calendar year ago. The only other thing was a bag of celery, some cream cheese and peanut butter. Naturally, my mind put two of these elements together like it had since kindergarten.
Just as the cream cheese was placed on the counter and my fingers were around the celery, I gasped. A hand grabbed my arm and the celery dropped on the floor. All I could see were a pair of hands that looked like a man’s hand or that of a woman with man hands and I passed out on the floor from the stealth move of pressing down on my shoulder pressure point. Clearly, this was a male ninja or a 34 year old PTA member and mother of two who had unfortunate man hands, but went to her share of sleepover parties where girls took turns trying it.
I awakened to find myself standing with a blindfold on. I felt something stabbing me in the back that suspiciously felt like a carrot. I was sworn to take an oath of secrecy that I would not reveal places, faces, or names, that might compromise the identity, or physical whereabouts of all involved. I was spun around ten times to lose my orientation. Then, I was led down an alley. I felt the artificial chill of perhaps a produce freezer, and the ninja or man handed woman pushed me down in a chair. Naturally, I would have sat down myself if I knew the chair was there. The smell of grape Hubba Bubba Bubble gum permeated from the corner “Man Hands” shuffled off to.
My blindfold was taken off by a woman who did not smell like Hubba Bubba. My eyes struggled to adjust to the light. There was a lightbulb over head so I could barely make out the woman with a pleasant voice, underneath which I could hear the twinge of someone who had been through a long ago trauma, backed up by the tone of perserverance.
I was introduced to “Wendy” (she only goes by her first name). She seemed like a nice gal, but she wasn’t always that way. As you will read, an incident befell her. Much like the Dark Knight was compelled to a life of justice, so was she. As my eyes adjusted, I noticed the flash of light reflected from a badge on her jacket. It was the insignia of the League of Suppression of Celery. Not knowing what my fate would be, I thought quickly and decided to take advantage of an interview. Maybe it would be my last!
It all began one Christmas Eve night when Wendy was four. She explained without much promptly, eager to tell her story:
“…My mother handed me a celery stalk loaded with peanut butter. Moments later, my intuitive corporeal body rejected this vile veggie. Imagine a big Christmas puke-fest. Poor Mom. In a way, I suppose it was karmic for her — a more enlightened mother would have known better. Still to this day she maintains that I’m the one with the problem and I consider it a big failing in life that I can’t get my own mother to see The Truth About Celery. I’m filled with shame.People call me a picky eater, but in fact, did you know that there are a select group of people who have a natural vomitous reaction to some of the chemicals in celery? This comes from being more highly evolved, one step further ahead in the evolutionary chain than the celery-eaters.Probably this might come across as elitist, but it’s really not. I feel it’s the League for the Suppression of Celery’s job to enlighten everyone about the devil’s vegetable. It’s just like any other cause, like mosquito nets to combat malaria, needing clean water to drink, literacy issues, and getting supermodels to eat more. (In fact, if they’d stop eating so much celery they might not have so many weight-related ailments.)
Could it have been that I was dragged in because of my thoughts of the vegetable? Was she going to kill me so that I could never make that mistake again?? I sheepishly inquired, “Um….Is crunching too loudly rude to you?”
And she shot back: “Definitely, but that has nothing to do with celery.”
A dead end! I thought fast. I have to keep her talking until I can figure out a way out, or at least figure out why I was brought down here. I decided to continue on that line of questioning. I might as well find out exactly why I was here at least for posterity in case I should not make it out. I realized I had a recipe card in my pocket, now slightly rumpled from the incident. I whipped it out of my pocket and showed it to her.
“Take a look at this photo.”
Wendy put a hand to her eye, as if I was shining a bright light in her face, “First of all, it would have been prudent for you to warn me about the picture before I opened it!”
I retorted: “Tell me how to make something that encapsulates the spirit of this dish without using celery?”
She relaxed from the trauma and replied,” As to the matter of celery as a carrier for high-fat dips, let me say first that there are only two real reasons people use celery. One is to carry really yummy stuff, because after all, at a party it would be unseemly to be walking around with a spoon dipping cream cheese or ranch dressing out of a bowl and eating it. No, you’d definitely never be invited back again. Second, celery is used as cheap filler for soups and other dishes. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who has confirmed that celery in many of these dishes has any flavor at all. It’s just a way that large companies rip off the consumer by bulking up the food with useless product. They might as well use packing peanuts, but I’m sure celery is cheaper, and of course the one thing celery does have going for it is that it’s biodegradable and not all packing peanuts are.”Have you ever met anyone who LIKES celery?”
I shrugged my shoulder, not feeling it was safe to admit I didn’t hate it. Dang, I am so easy to please people.
“The other Truth about celery is that there are only three groups of people — those who hate celery, those who tolerate celery and those who eat celery because they think it will help them lose weight. And THAT urban myth is one that is fostered by the deceptive celery farmers who started the rumor that celery has “negative calories”. This has not been proven to be true by any means.”But back to your question. I propose, in lieu of using celery sticks as your dip carrier, try alternating some other fine vegetable. There are so many from which to choose. Some people say, “Yes, but other vegetables don’t have that handy channel for filling with peanut butter or whipped fake cheese product!” True, but I have two words for you… DREMEL TOOL. All you have to do is slice a carrot down the middle and then take the Dremel tool and route a channel right down the middle.
“I raised an eyebrow, “That seems to me very time consuming.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for this idea; I saw it on a Martha episode and thought it was a really inspired solution to the celery snack problem.”
“Martha. Of course. That would figure.” I thought it might be wise to stay on topic and not veer off into talking about making crocheted booties for free range chickens. “Speaking of Martha…what would you tell decorators to rename ‘Celery Green,’? Or would you just want to get rid of the shade entirely?”
“This has been a big problem for us. We generally work in a “top down” method of activism. We tackle the biggest issues first, the ones that cause danger to people or to society. We have a few members who are kinder and gentler and prefer to work on these issues as it suits their personalities better. They don’t care to write angry letters or walk picket lines. These are the people who work on issues like paint and fabric colors and other decorating issues. There is a place for all types of people in the LSC and we value their hard work for the cause. We do try to educate designers and offer them some great alternatives such as sea green, sage, riverbank, apple whispers, willow, etc. Almost always once they realize how misguided they are, it’s a simple matter to get the color changed during the next fashion season. The industry has been really supportive of our cause so far. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re good at what we do or if they’re just afraid of people puking on their couches”
The light was dimming, and I felt the need to keep her talking, not knowing what would happen next. I quickly veered back to the produce aisle: “The uninitated sometimes see bok choy at the store and mistake it for celery. Do you find that bok choy gets unfairly “vegetabley profiled?” How do you feel about bok choy?”
We at the LSC are unfairly pigeonholed as unyielding, hardline, and judgmental. In relation to celery, yes, we might seem like that, but other than celery we are very broadminded and encourage people to experiment freely with a variety of healthy vegetables. Bok choy is a great food and we have never, ever given any indication that bok choy is harmful in any way. Now, fennel might be one that is borderline. I have never actually had fennel because I’ve heard it is similar to celery, but we leave that to our members as a matter of conscience. They have the power to choose regarding fennel.
Wendy leaned in to me as far as her stool would allow without tipping, and spoke in a stage whisper:I do feel the need to approach an awkward topic you are bound to ask about. There is a very small splinter group of fundamentalists (fLSC) who are far more militant than we are. They are an unpredictable hate group who don’t have a policy of non-violence like we do. They also are less tolerant of other veggies like bok choy, fennel and, get this, water chestnuts. I kid you not. Please do not confuse any of our members with such radical fundamentalists.
“Thanks for the warning.” I wondered if the splinter group used broken tooth picks as weapons, to merely annoy you with feeling the splinters in your fingers but not to cause any effective harm unless you are allergic to birch or are hemophiliac. I am sure there is another society that is concerned about using birch in toothpicks. They probably collected them from gruffly breaking them off veggies in the crudite’ tray. One never knows how radical a “radical splinter group” can get. I suddenly became a little confused, wondering if indeed I was not captured and held here on the request of Wendy, but that we were BOTH captive by the fLSC.Not sure if it was a sensitive topic or not, I whispered back:
“How vast is the membership of the League of the Suppression of Celery? Or are many members closeted or are names protected just like in a secret society?”
“Because of the vast nature of the Celery Conspiracy, there are many members who choose not to have their identities revealed. This is why the blog format is so nice because we can disseminate a vast amount of information without anyone having to compromise their lives by way of endangering their jobs or having their children harassed or their cars keyed by angry neighbors.”However, it doesn’t hurt for me to say that our membership is quite vast and you’d be surprised how far-reaching our influence.”"I was informed on a ban on throwing celery at rugby matches. Do you think that this speaks of the evilness of celery, or do you think they are naturally a bit daft in England anyway becuase the UK consumes 120 million stalks of celery per year? Elaborate.”Actually, Europe is highly enlightened about the evils of celery. Their food actually comes with warning labels if celery is in the contents. “Wendy” then handed me a business card. She wrote the following url on the back, along with a UK toll free line where she scrawled ‘hotline’:
http://celeryfree.blogspot.com/2009/01/celery-comes-with-warning-labels-in.html
Have you dialed the celery hotline? Or have you been tempted to?
No, I have never dialed it, although I HAVE been tempted.. I nodded. I knew how tempting indeed it was. I used to call the Phone Friend that was a homework hotline, and asked the volunteer how babies were made just to see if they would tell me something other than to ask my parents. Of course, at that age I knew but my friends thought it was quite clever.
“Once I was on an airplane and the man seated next to me ordered a Bloody Mary. This would have been fine had we not been in first class, but being in first class they classed it up by inserting a celery stalk into his glass. The stewardess reached across my personal space to hand it to him and the smell was just too much. Fortunately I didn’t have to ask him to dispose of the vile stuff because I was too busy making liberal use of my air sickness bag (and his too). After that he didn’t really care about his Bloody Mary anymore.
Now, was the question I was just dying to ask, about a film that was much beloved in my childhood. No matter what I did, I had to make sure I asked. ”How does the film ‘Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” make you feel? Should it have been celery?”I’m angered about this film because, you might not know this, but the original script was supposed to be about celery. Apparently the celery growers got to John de Bello before he could go ahead with the filming as it was. When asked about it later he claimed that he changed the movie to be about tomatoes because it was more artistic because “the tomato guts look like real blood.” He stated there were creative differences between him and his cinematographer John Culley, but I have seen redacted documents that show Culley was actually a plant (no pun intended) from a California celery growers association. In fact, Culley never worked on another film after Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, so what does that tell you?
I never knew that a film, this side of Schindler’s List or Old Yeller could have illicited such strong emotions. I was a little taken aback and my eyes flitted around the room searching for a topic. I spied an oil painting of a lovely young woman. In the dim light I could barely make out the brass plaque that stated that this was Fearne Cotton. And it had a quote:
I’m an arachnophobe.
I hate spiders.
I also hate celery
I can’t have it anywhere near me
…as I freak out.
- Fearne Cotton
I dared to ask: ”If you were asked to spearhead a Fearne Cotton fan club, would you?”
Wendy looked reverently at the painting: “We adore Fearne Cotton and are currently in negotiations to secure her as our celebrity spokesperson. While I think she is marvelous, I simply wouldn’t have time to do the job justice.”
“Have you read “The Celery Stalks at Midnight”, by author of James Howe, from the Bunnicula series? If so, do you have the opinion that it should be banned, as it supports the protection of veggies from Bunicula the vampire bunny or do you think it is fun to read about celery in danger?”
“I have not read this book, but it was brought to my attention by one of my Captains. We’ve got it on our list and will be checking into the matter. I genuinely feel we should all uphold the principles of Freedom of Speech. This is what makes America so great (and keeps the celery farmers from silencing me once and for all). I would never want a book to be banned unless it somehow advocated using celery in a way that endangers people. Cookbooks are very close to crossing the line, but again I think this is more from ignorance than from some willful intent to harm people.”
“Would you push the book as mandatory school reading?”
Again, we will have to wait and see.
“Speaking of farmers…How do you feel about Orange County California, as it has a rich history of having been the celery capital at the turn of the century. Would you go there and be able to forgive, or would you go as an activist? Or just avoid the place?”
“Funny you should mention that. I used to live in an area in California that was one of the biggest producers of celery ever. I didn’t know when I moved there, but once I found out I moved as soon as I could arrange it financially. People wonder why there is so much gang-related violence there. They wrongly attribute it to racial tension, but I know The Truth — the human body is just not designed to live surrounded by that kind of potential danger. Just like activists say they don’t want nuclear power plants in their cities — same thing. The tension is too unbearable for people but they can’t figure out what’s causing it because they are indoctrinated from the time they are babies.”
Suddenly, a small trap door opened near the ceiling. Slowly, one by one, various vegetables rolled down. Soon the floor was covered and we started to hear a rumble. It immediately brought to mind the trash compactor scene from Star Wars, although in this case the debris around us was nutritious and delicious.
I called out to Wendy:
“If I don’t make it, tell my readers that at least I am Resting in Peas.” In case I indeed made it, I quickly asked her: “If you had the opportunity to speak to all the children of America about Celery for five minutes, what would you say?”
We have a standard presentation we do at the schools. It explains the various dangers of celery from the small (choking hazards) to the more dangerous (genetically engineered celery). We generally don’t go into the economic and political factors because it’s over their heads. We also have a little puppet show we do that shows a large, menacing celery stalk attacking a small group of cute children. That’s often very effective. Sometimes it makes the children cry, but we later give them pieces of roasted eggplant with hummus on it and that dries up their tears and puts smiles back on their adorable faces.We also give out t-shirts with the LSC logo on them with the slogan, “Just Say No!” We feel like we’re making progress.
That was the last thing I remembered before I “came to.” I wondered what happened. Because the League of Suppression of Celery had friends everywhere, I am sure Wendy got out. I found myself standing in front of a steamed up mirror in a bathroom. The shower was running, but I don’t remember turning it on. I pulled back the shower curtain and let out a scream! Patrick Duffy was standing in my shower. Oh, so that last season/episode must have been all a dream. Nobody shot JR or whatever else happened.
But wait. When Dallas was on, I was a kid, so having a Patrick Duffy from the 80s in my shower just wasn’t cool…it was down right creepy. So I ran away. And then I woke up. And realized that Patrick Duffy was only in my dream because I always was shuffled off to bed or at least out of the room when Dallas came on because it was felt too mature a show for me at the time. As soon as the music started, I knew that all bets were off.
So, I awakened for real. I went to the kitchen bleary eyed. I opened the refrigerator door just like I had at the beginning of the story. Did I travel back in time? Was celery poisoning real and it was all a hallucination? Only something was different in the fridge. There had been a bag of celery there before. In its place was an empty bag. On it was a business card. It read:
League for the Suppression of Celery. Push in an emergency.
And there was a tiny pin with a call button on it. I don’t know what was reality and what was all a dream, but I knew that if I ever had an emergency where I was thinking about celery, I could push the button. Or maybe it was just for reporting public celery incidents. I would have to find out. But why this elaborate ruse. What happened to Man Hands? What about Wendy? and what all happened. I guess that is fodder for a future episode…
For more information about the League for the Suppression of Celery, visit new friend of TheSnackHound, Wendy, at http://celeryfree.blogspot.com/.
Acknowledgements:
Tomato Torture Photo compliments of Acobox
Fearne Cotton “painting,” a creation of TheSnackHound herself.
Patrick Duffy appears courtesy of my mother, as that episode was the only one I saw and thought, “This is what adults watch?” Mr. Duffy of course is the pioneer of “None of this happened, it was all a dream season of Newhart, Roseanne, and many other shows.
Refrigerator by Kenmore
Hubba Bubba appears courtesy of Hill’s Pharmacy in Mukwonago, Wisconsin and Walgreen’s in Podunk, Michigan
Wendy appears courtesy of the League of The Suppression of Celery
******
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Lidian, over at Kitchen Retro, presented the eerily and unnaturally green Rose Brand Pickles over on her blog. (The photo is courtesy of Live Journal Ads.) Perhaps the unusual hue was due to some post-war radiation or perhaps a food chemist wished to appeal to the kiddies who hated to eat their veggies. Either way, as a pickle aficionado, I wouldn’t touch em with a ten foot cattle prod with a bottle of hand sanitizer on the end. Turning down pickles may not be so earth-shattering to you, but since I was the author of the 3rd Grade penmanship assignment, Paul Bunyan at the Pickle Factory, it almost qualifies as a downright conniption fit.
Another pickle contractor to Rose was Bick’s. The Bick’s family of Canada also supplied pickles to Rose. (The Bicks moved to Canada in 1934, which leads me to believe they were Americans. Everyone else emigrates; Americans move.) After Rose cancelled the agreement, perhaps because none of the Bicks swam in the pickle vat, the Bick’s struck out on their own, and later went on to be the biggest supplier of Pickles in Canada. Bick’s was purchased by Smuckers in 2004. What became of Rose? Well, Rose still sells the popular Pork Brains in Milk Gravy and other canned meat delicacies. I think I will stick with pickles. I don’t even have to think. I just know.
Okay, it is not really Fudgie the Whale. That is just what popped into my head. In fact, I don’t think I know any other name for a traditional whale. Of course, there are plenty of Killer Whales with names, but I didn’t know any Blue Whales to have a name. No one would have one as a pet on a show, except of course Aqua Man. However, I think Aqua Man would have been the 200 ton whale’s “little pet” instead.
The very unsettling idea is the prospect of being able to order your very own Fudgie Mascot Costume. I don’t know if it is officially endorsed by Carvel, or not, but I saw one on a mascot site. There is a BIG rule of thumb when it comes to costumes. Aside from the plastic costumes with masks that were around in the 70s through mid to early 80s, until people decided kids couldn’t breathe in those masks, if you have to put the characters name on the front of it to let people know what you are, it is not a good costume!
Recently, I was corrected. Who knows why I never bothered to read the company history on the website, but there was actually a Chris that had nothing to do with Ruth. Chris Steak House was in a down and out section of New Orleans when Ruth Fertel decided to buy it in the 1960s. Instead of changing the name, she called it “Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.” It sure probably saved a ton of money on signage because she would just have to put a sticky note or tap in a little plywood board to ad the Ruth part. Pretty ingenius.
This weekend, the story came up again about “51 In a Bucket,” the mythical menu item at 
“Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor – heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness. Life Buoy, on the other hand… YECCHH!”
Maybe I should stop trying to pinpoint my strange childhood eating habits on a trauma and just admit that some foods are not particularly tasty to young kids, or that our family just wasn’t on the international culinary scene, but the working class midwestern cuisine scene. I recall going to Denny’s and ordering toast with butter on the side, or ordering plain spaghetti with parmesan cheese, while the rest of the family ate all sorts of things that were colors other than white or beige or slightly yellow.
