Appetizers - Celery Pinwheels

I'm on my third time through the cook book now, sort of.  Last time through I skipped some of the short sections.  Maybe I'll hit each section again this time.  With only 9 recipes to the Appetizers section though, hitting the section too frequently will make me exhaust the section and see me drinking consomme... bleh.  But I had an excuse to make celery pinwheels, we were going over to grill with friends and visit with people.  So I got to foist questionable sounding food on friends.  Amazingly enough, they're still friends, hooray!

Pinwheels.  Everybody loves pinwheels, right?  I remember waving them in the air at some little town parade.  I remember taking one out of some little garden where they were put in the ground around the flowers.  I vaguely remember some funny old children's show called Pinwheel, or more precisely I remember the theme song for the show.

I don't remember anything about the show or where I might have seen it though since we never had cable.  Looking for this video clip got me deep down a wikipedia rabbit hole and lead me to another show that a just barely remember, that had a mannequin that came to life or something depending on whether it had its hat on.

The internet is nuts.  Why would I ever have thought about this old show that I maybe saw only a handful of times.  But I digress.

Preparation

Celery Pinwheels are chock full o' magic, and by magic, I mean "nippy spreading cheese".

After two times through the cook book, I find I keep saying something along the lines of, "This recipe is pretty simple except."  Well, this recipe is pretty simple, no exceptions.  Two ingredients, four steps.  But nippy spreading cheese.  I'm not sure I know what this even means.  I know Cheeze Whiz (Cheez Wiz?  Chi Zwiz?).  I remember making grilled cheezes with it back in elementary school.  *hork*  There has to be something better than that.  Thank you Trader Joe's for making my search for spreadable cheese pretty painless.

Really unsure of the culinary adventure ahead of me.

Alright, so spread and squish together.  Easy peasy cheezi squeezee.

Messy

 The consistency of the cheese and the behavior of the bundle does not bode well.

Easier to wrap than tie

I was wondering if maybe I should have added more spackle... errr, chiez.  Whatever, it was either going to hold together, or it wasn't.  The next thing was to take it to the cook out, cut it up and tell people to eat it for the good of the internet.

Ceramic knife.  So nice.

Celery pinwheels.  So good?

So Good!!!  

Tasting and Reaction

Since I forced victims to eat this culinary monstrosity it was a cook out and people were busy visiting and watching young kids not fight and or run into the ally, I didn't have people record their thoughts.  I'll just have to go with what I remember and what I can interpret from the pictures I took.

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 As an architect, Chris is disappointed by the structural integrity of the pinwheels.

 Maggie seemed to like the horseradish in the cheese and thought they were alright.  It might be her Midwest upbringing though.  Not shown after this is Maggie and Chris's oldest daughter in tears after having a taste.  Poor girl.

Now I'm afraid after this, I don't remember names of people who were there, so I'm going to make things up.  Sorry folks.

 Chris is judging whether Bill the Cat has noticed how the pinwheels would not actually work as pinwheels.

Michael Knight was pretty sure Kitt will save him from the danger.

 Carissa Cumberbatch was positively generous and positive about her gob of celer-eeze.

Bojangles Funkenstein was thrilled simply to be able eat food and be around people after his stint in solitary.

Sorry folks, someday maybe I'll be better at remembering names.  No I won't.  But seriously, despite the fact that they were simply eating squishy cheese spread on raw celery, people were far more positive than I ever expected they would be.  I wouldn't go so far as to call celery pinwheels good, but as I do recall someone saying, "They're not the worst thing I've ever had."  A few people liked the horseradish, and the flavor of the cheese spread balanced out the sharpness of the raw celery.  Perhaps I didn't use enough cheese, or maybe the physical quality of spreadable cheese is different from what it was 64 years ago, but the pinwheels never stood a chance of holding together.  I don't know that I could have done much different to help that along.  Bacon perhaps.  Bacon wrapped and fastened around the pinwheels.  That might just be alright.

Last time in the Appetizers section, I made Stuffed Cucumbers.  The celery pinwheels were about on par with the cucumbers.  Neither was particularly good, but not exactly bad either.  They were both perfectly edible, and I think that's about all that can be said.  Next time I get to the Appetizers section, I will probably have to try the Potato Chip Appetizers.  That'll be an adventure in food to be sure.

Next time:  Bread