Redeemed by rhubarb

After last week’s kale disaster, I speculated on the possibility of trying another cooking experiment this week, this time with rhubarb.

Rhubarb has always seemed to me to be a very odd…fruit? vegetable? I guess it must be a fruit, since people make dessert out of it. But it looks suspiciously like celery. After buying a couple of bunches at our farmer’s market this morning, Middle Sister discovered that a stalk of rhubarb makes a great instrument for whacking. She and The Boy would have ended up having a rhubarb sword fight if I hadn’t stepped in and rescued the produce.

So anyway, last week Nancy at Diary of a Not So Ordinary Boy suggested I try a favorite English pudding, rhubarb crumble. I’d almost forgotten about it until we just happened to see a pile of rhubarb in the midst of our search for red and yellow peppers this morning. But the long, reddish stalks caught my eye, and two bunches quickly went into our bag. Actually, they were too long to fit into the bag and we just carried them out in the open.

Back at home, I Googled a good recipe for rhubarb crumble. Not much different from apple crumble, really. Except that the author of this recipe noted that the addition of an egg is important to keep the rhubarb filling from being too runny.

We’ll be serving it warm, with Shatto vanilla ice cream. Shatto is a local dairy that sells the BEST milk, cheese, ice cream, and butter I’ve ever tasted. I had always figured butter was butter until I tasted Shatto butter. Heaven in your mouth.

I’ll report later on the success of our crumble. My guess is that we’ll do much better than the 50% approval rating we received from the kale chips.

Thanks, Nancy, for the challenge!

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