A Healthy Holiday Appetizer: Stuffed Celery

So here I go, my first attempt at a recipe on Hubpages! I decided to write a hub about my favorite appetizer for holiday events, Stuffed Celery. There are many variations on the recipe but I'm going to share the one I grew up with. In fact it is one that has been a favorite in my family for generations. My grandmother was first introduced to it by my grandfather's family right before they got married. We use the appetizer for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning, Christmas Dinner, New Years Eve, Birthdays, and picnics. Due to its simplicity it can be used for anything from finger food to appetizers at cocktail parties, snacks while watching the football game, or just a delicious healthy snack for whenever!

This recipe is very simple. It includes only 3 ingredients: Celery, Cream Cheese, and green olives. Simply buy a stalk of celery at the grocery store, make sure it's crisp and fresh, if not try soaking it in a little water before starting.

Any cream cheese will do, I haven't used anything other than regular cream cheese but that shouldn't stop you from experimenting! You also don't want to get a tub of cream cheese you want to get the little box, where the cream cheese comes in a bar shape. This is just easier to deal with then scooping out spoonful after spoonful from a tub.

As for the olives, I prefer green olives which are Spanish Manzonilla olives, I get the ones stuffed with minced pimiento. They are the green olives in a clear jar stuffed with little red things (the minced pimiento). They are usually in the section with canned foods and the canned black olives. They do have to be refrigerated after opening.

• If you find yourself with not enough time to stuff the celery just cut up the stalks and leave a bowl of the cream cheese and olives out. Due to the thickness of the cream cheese it's a great for dipping, there are less spills!
• If you find yourself with no celery, the stuffing tastes great on crackers as well. I'm sure other vegetables will taste good as well!

Total time: 10-15 minutes depending on how you like to serve it and how quick you are in the kitchen!

Mixing the stuffing:

1. To start take your cream cheese, for a dinner size plate all you need is bar, for a platter try two.
2. Take the bar of cream cheese and unwrap it from the foil, place in a decent size mixing bowl, but one that will fit in your microwave. Place the bowl in the microwave for 20 seconds. This will soften up the cream cheese making it easier to mix.
3. Now take your jar of olives and pour some in the bowl of soften cream cheese. Be careful not to let the liquid in the jar get into the bowl, however a a few splashes will help later on in the mixing.
4. Once you put as many olives as you would like into the bowl start cutting the olives up into half pieces and quarter pieces. It may get messy looking but don't worry.
5. Once you cut up all the olives take a fork and begin mix the cream cheese and the olives, folding the cream cheese over the olives.
6. When you're done mixing it should look similar to the photo on the right.

Finishing up!

1. Now that you have the stuffing mixed up you need to prepare the celery.
2. Take one stalk at a time and clean it under warm water, sometimes they have dirt so you want to make sure it's clean.
3. Once the stalk of celery is clean, gently pat it dry with a paper towel or towel.
4. Cut the bottom of the stalk off, this part is usually a whitish yellow.
5. Next you can cut off the top part with the leaves. If you want to save these they are still edible and make great accents for your plate of appetizers.
6. Now cut the rest of the stalk into inch long pieces, make sure to cut across the stalk not up, you want little crevices for the stuffing to go.
7. Once you have the pieces of celery all cut into inch long sections, take a folk or spoon and scoop as much of the cream cheese and olives and stuff it into the crevice of the celery.
8. Do this for as many pieces of celery as you have. Feel free to taste test one, two or five I know i always do!
9. Once the celery is stuffed place on a plate or platter, i find they arrange well in a circle on the plate.
10. Finally Serve!