I used to treat celery like a ticking time bomb. Buy it Sunday, bendy by Wednesday, trash by Friday. Somehow celery costs more than it should and goes bad faster than anything else in the drawer.

Then my produce-manager neighbor caught me tossing a limp bunch. He grabbed it out of my hand, filled a glass with water, and set it on the counter. Next morning: crisp. Like I’d just bought it. I felt dumb.

The water trick

Celery is 95% water. When it goes limp, the cells have lost water but they’re not dead. They’ll drink it back.

If you pre-chop for meal prep: store celery sticks submerged in water in a sealed container in the fridge. Change the water every two days. They’ll stay snappy for a week.

Freezer tip: chopped celery freezes well for cooking (not for raw eating). Blanch it for 2 minutes, cool in ice water, dry, freeze flat on a tray, then bag it. Use straight from frozen in soups and stews.

And if it’s gone too far — yellow, slimy, smells off — let it go. Limp is fixable. Rot is not.