Rhubarb and garlic

A few posts back I posted a photo of my rhubarb patch and a recipe for Rhubarb bread. As I was harvesting some more rhubarb this morning I got to thinking that for some folks the world of rhubarb may be new. If you are one of those I'd like to welcome you to this wonderful plant. Rhubarb, Rheum rhabarbarum, is an herbaceous perennial. The word herbaceous refers to plants that have stems and leaves that die back to the ground in winter, or the end of the growing season. Here's an interesting tidbit I just read from Wikipedia (love that site!); rhubarb first came to the states through Maine and Massachusetts during the 1820's. Being from Maine I think that would be interesting to research a bit more (Mike you out there!?). Rhubarb's stems are harvested by pulling them so that they break off at the soil level. Here's a photo of harvested rhubarb that shows what the bottom of rhubarb (white tips) looks like if pulled off the plant properly.

Rhubarb newly pulled from the plant

The leaves are toxic so those must be discarded into the compost pile or left along side of the rhubarb plant to decompose right there into the soil.

There are several ways to use rhubarb. There's rhubarb breads and pies. As I mentioned, I posted a recipe for Rhubarb Bread a while back. For Strawberry/Rhubarb Pie there are many recipes for available online. We like it served warm with vanilla ice cream. If you wait until local strawberries are ready then you are getting the rhubarb at the end of its season. Another way to use up your rhubarb is to just boil it with a sweetener. This makes a basic rhubarb sauce and is so good over ice cream. It's also delicious to just eat it warm like that. Rhubarb is tart and needs quite a bit of sweetener. I usually use a combination of raw sugar and maple syrup because we usually have lots of maple syrup on hand (see my maple syrup blog if you would like to see how that is made). Taste the sauce as it's cooking to adjust sweetness to your liking. As the rhubarb boils it gets very mushy.

Rhubarb Sauce:

Rhubarb
Sweetener such as sugar, maple syrup, honey

Pull rhubarb from plants
Rinse well
Cut off top green parts (some people use these but I don't like them; they are too tart and to me they aren't worth the extra sweetener)
Trim off the tips of the white bottom parts that come from the plant - you may notice they feel a bit slimy, that is normal and should rinse off when rinsed
Cut rhubarb into 1" pieces
Put rhubarb and sweetener in a tiny bit of water in a sauce pan
Bring to a gentle boil and boil until a sauce forms
Check sweetness and adjust to taste - the red parts aren't as tart as the green parts

Enjoy!

Also, some folks just pull a piece of rhubarb off the plant and chew on it. Kids in particular like to do that. Just remember to tell them not to eat the leaves!

Early Spring Garlic

Early garlic that sprung up throughout the garden

For several weeks now I have been harvesting tiny garlic plants that have sprouted up throughout the garden. As I dug up beds I would find bunches of these tiny garlic plants that came up from garlic bulbils from last year. Bulbils are seed like structures that develop from the flower of garlic plants. Rather than throw these tiny garlic plants into the compost, why not eat them? They taste great cooked and used like regular garlic. These plants are not the garlic I planted last fall to harvest this year. These are "weeds" that I didn't plant. It is not time to harvest garlic that were planted from garlic bulbs in the fall. More on that later.

Coming next....spinach and lettuce!