I’ll never understand why stores sell 16-ounce bundles of celery hearts when I only need two. A friend of mine recently complained that he had too much leftover celery in the fridge that was slowly dying, so I know it’s not just me. Unless you’re going to run a juicer in your house, there’s bound to be too much celery. When I have too much celery, I make this delicious celery salad.

I know “delicious” and “celery salad” sound like lies upon lies, but it’s actually (and painfully) something I enjoy. I was flipping through one of my favorite cookbooks, Ottolenghi’s Plenty More, and found a celery salad with a hard-boiled egg. If you put a hard-boiled egg on something, I’m signing up, so I tried it out. It was delicious, with lots of crunch from the celery and green pepper, saltiness from the feta, and tongue-tingling lemon wedges thrown in. With that framework in place, this salad eventually evolved into the leftover celery salad I’m making today.

The trick to keeping celery from becoming painfully tough as a raw vegetable is to slice it thinly and with a dramatic bias. Frankly, it’s just easier to eat. Chewing thick chunks of celery is tiring. Thin slices shorten the stringy outer fibers and expose more of the tender interior, which softens a bit in the lemon vinaigrette but still retains a good amount of crunch. You can enjoy the green flavor of celery without feeling like you need a rest day.

It’s no secret that celery doesn’t have much nuance to its watery flavor, so you’ll want to add some helpers that excite you. Make no mistake, celery is the star, but a hard-boiled egg, some beans, a pinch of herbs, or crumbled cheese can make this salad something to look forward to.