“Celery is an Insult to Human Dignity”

A while ago, I came across a diatribe against celery written by Mallory Ortberg that I could have written (I mean by this, that I feel as strongly about celery as the writer does, not that I could deliver as captivating and successful an attack on this horrid and depraved little vegetable as she does); it captures my feelings about celery, but could easily apply to many (most) vegetables 😛

Some gems from it include:

“Celery eater Martha Rose Shulman writes: “I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish,” and then proceeds to instruct her readers on how to cook and eat the thing, as if celery were capable of being eaten and digested, when everyone knows it just rolls around in the mouth, becoming more and more fibrous, until one is obliged to spit it out in a napkin.”

And in response to another writer’s claim that celery makes for a great main ingredient in a risotto because it stands up to the creamy rice Ortberg writes:

“Celery has two forms: a stiff and watery stalk that splinters into a thousand tangled splinters, or a brown and flaccid, steaming mush-corpse bristling with tender hairs. Creamy rice does not need to be “stood up to,” creamy rice is pleasant and inoffensive. Celery tastes like bundles of floss that have achieved sentience through anger and banded together to jam themselves permanently into your teeth.”

And the coup de grâce:

“Celery is an insult to human dignity.”

You can find the whole article here.