Celery
Celery has pure raw power – not only awesome with dips, but also great in lunchboxes and almost any salad. It has serious crunch for those who love raw veg! Yet, there is more, so much more – try adding celery to meatballs and tomato sauce, and cook until soft or add them to almost any stew or soup for extra flavour and veggie goodness.
Nutrition
Celery, much like cucumber, has a high water content. It’s also rich in minerals like potassium and calcium which are important for heart health as well as folate which helps the body to form healthy red blood cells.
Shopping Guide
You want fresh, firm stalks for your celery where they don’t feel or appear to be rubbery.
Storage
To store, wrap a bunch of celery tightly in tin foil and keep in the fridge for up to a month.
Serving Suggestions
Try a stick of raw celery with any of your favourite dips. Celery is not only awesome with dips, but also great in lunchboxes and almost any salad. Try adding along to any spag bol or meatball sauce along with you tomatoes, carrots and onions.
Seasonality
Buying veg in season is not only great for the planet, it can be good for your wallet, too! Seasonal veg are often cheaper and frequently taste better, so can be a better time to try with a child as the often sweeter, riper taste is more enjoyable.
Coming In:
June
At Its Best:
July - December
Engage
Here are some of our favourite ways to engage kids with celery:
Science
Science allows for curiosity, play and hands-on experiments. It helps kids to become fascinated with veg – how it looks, reacts, smells, cooks and more. Finding fun and simple experiments to allow kids to play with their veg makes them curious about it and helps them approach it in a positive way.
Try a colour-changing veg experiment with celery. Grab 3-5 stalks of celery from a bunch that still have the leaves attached at the top. Place each stalk into glasses or jars half-filled with water that has a different colour of food colouring in each one with the leaf-end pointing up out of the glass. Place in a sunny spot like a windowsill and check every few hours, leaving up to 3 days, jotting down a video or written log with your child to show how the water gets absorbed and the celery leaves change colour!
Sensory
Sensory exploration can be a wonderful introduction to physically interacting with veg. Turn it into a positive, pressure-free experience by starting off with the golden rules of “You don’t need to try and you don’t need to like.” Reassuring a child that, while they have a chance to taste a veg, they don’t have to, and are not expected to like it if they do, can make them more happy to engage with it.
Explore the crunchiness of celery through hearing by getting a few stalks of raw celery, and a few stalks that you have cooked until soft. Try biting the different celeries to hear the difference in crunchiness and softness (or snapping it near your ear if they aren’t ready to eat them). Which one is loud? Which is quiet? Which do you prefer?
Kids in the Kitchen
Children who help to prep and cook veg are more likely to eat it. If you feel your child is ready to help and could benefit from it, keep the stress and mess to a minimum by choosing one simple task for them to do as part of the prep, meaning they can be involved and feel like the recipe is in part ‘theirs’, but also not make the process too much longer or more complicated.
For a younger child, why not get them to set up an after-school snack platter with you by popping a dip or two in the middle of a large plate or tray and surrounding it with different cut raw vegetables including celery?
For an older child, it could be a great opportunity to teach some essential knife skills. Show them how to start with a bunch of celery, snap some stalks off, wash them, and then carefully slice using the claw technique into celery sticks or even to slice thinly to add with some onion and carrot to the base of a sauce or stew dish.
DOWNLOADS:
Use our Kitchen Ninja chart and videos to find simple ways for kids to help in the kitchen.
Your Food
Find your go-to meals in our family favourites section and see what veggies work best with them.
Find out how to add more veg to your suppers here.
Recipes
Serving
The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it!
The first thing to do is remove the pressure. If the veg doesn’t get eaten, it’s not the end of the world. There will be other days, other dinners, other chances. Fun is key here – try not to worry about mess, perfect table manners, or playing with food. Instead, focus on making the process of getting the food to the plates, readying the table, and the actual eating relaxed.
The best principles for success here are the Three Rs (role modelling, rewarding, re-offering) which you can read about here.
But there is one more way you can serve for success, and that is giving your child a role. You don’t have to do this every time, just encourage them in their strengths through it when you can.
Here are some of our favourite ideas:
Design a menu
Come up with a silly name or story for a dish
Help with making a meal plan and choosing veg for dinners or snacks
Help to serve up the meal on dishes, lay the table or create a centrepiece to be involved in the physical ‘serving up’ process
The Wonderful World of Veg
Check out our vegepedia. When to buy in-season. How to store them to keep for longer. How to engage children with each veg, and simple ideas of how to prepare and cook them for maximum taste and minimum waste. Select a veg…