This salad is a miracle for me. If you had told me just last year that I would be eating raw celery root and fennel, I would have laughed (and then possibly vomited). There are really only two foods in this world that I ever say that I strongly dislike: fennel and, even more so, celery.
My aversion to celery goes all the way back to kindergarten, where I would get in trouble on a daily basis for scooping the peanut butter and raisins out of my ants on a log, leaving the gutted celery sticks behind. (In retrospect, I wonder why my teacher didn’t stop giving me this snack when it was very clear that I hated celery and nothing was going to make me eat it.) My distaste for fennel developed recently, but that’s because I never ate it until a few years ago. I’m not a fan of anise/licorice flavors in general and huge fennel bulbs taste really strongly of that flavor and I just can’t stomach it.
