Eight Ways (and More) to Eat Your Rhubarb

See updates below!

1. Pull the stalks out of the garden and eat them raw. Karen comments

   Our grandmother had a huge rhubarb patch in back of her garage and I remember we used to pick it and dip it in brown sugar and eat. Some of our friends used to dip it in salt instead of brown sugar. I remember it was so very delicious. Remember washing it using the backyard garden hose.

   It’s mostly children, I think, who dare to eat it raw. Did you? Sugar or salt?


2. Make sauce by taking 4 cups sliced fresh or frozen rhubarb and cooking it in a saucepan with 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar. Cook and stir on low heat until the rhubarb is tender. You may want to adjust the sugar to your own tastes. I like mine tart.
   
   Eat rhubarb sauce plain in a bowl, over vanilla yogurt (how I like mine), or over ice cream or cake. Suggested additions: dried blueberries (Kim of Hiraeth) and strawberries (WhiteStone). WhiteStone has a suggestion for serving it, too.

   When we were growing up on the farm, we had lotsa rhubarb. We also had a small strawberry patch and strawberries never went far enough at our dinner table. So we made a lot or rhubarb sauce with strawberries cooked in. Made ‘em go farther. Put that sauce on a square of homemade yellow cake, add whipped cream, and you have heaven here on earth. Almost.

   Update: Kim has written a little poem about … well, go see.


3. Make jam. I like to mix mine with strawberries to make strawberry-rhubarb jam. (Did you know that putting rhubarb in with cooked strawberries improves the taste of the strawberries? I know it seems impossible, but it’s true.) Dorothy suggests blueberry-rhubarb jam, and tells us that the combo is “practically perfect.” There’s rhubarb-ginger jam, too, and bumbleberry jam usually has a little rhubarb in it.


4. Just drink it. I like a rhubarb cooler on a hot day, but I mix the juice with with club soda rather than lemon-lime. Update, May 17: Better yet, with a little more work, you can make rhubarb slushes.


5. Make Rhubarb Walnut Muffins (Dorothy’s recipe). Rhubarb and a crumb topping—two of my favorite things—turned into a muffin.


6. Bake rhubarb crisp, a favorite of Kim of The Upward Call and WhiteStone. My mother used to make Rhubarb Crunch (pictured above), which is a crisp-like dessert.


7. Put together a yummy pie. (Rhubarb isn’t called pie plant for nothing.) Here’s a recipe for rhubarb pie from Judy at Mennonite Girls Can Cook. This one calls for 2 eggs in the filling, which is the way I usually make plain rhubarb pie. If I’m baking rhubarb into a pie, however, it is usually a strawberry-rhubarb one. [Update, May 13: You could also top your rhubarb pie with meringue]


8. Make Dorothy’s Honey Rhubarb Betty. “If you love rhubarb, I can’t imagine that you won’t love it.”

There you have it. Thanks to those who gave me recipes or made suggestions for favorite ways to eat rhubarb. And it’s not too late to add to my list should you have more suggestions.

Update on Monday, May 3, 2010 at 12:38PM by rebecca

9. Make a Rhubarb Custard Tart (Mennonite Girls Can Cook)

Thankful Thursday

The days have been busy with spring yard clean up and project planning. I love this time of year. I’d say it’s my favorite time of year, but I think I’ve already said that about summer, fall, and winter, too. I guess I just enjoy the changing seasons. I’m thankful that God made the world with changing seasons and put me in a place where we have more than one of them.

I’m thankful for baseball season, too.

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be and encouragement to you and to others, I promise.

Quiz: Doctrine of Man

Here’s a short theology quiz on the doctrine of man. (I suppose to be politically correct, I should call it the doctrine of human beings or humankind or something, but that just sounds silly.) All the answers can be found in Theological Term of the Week posts under the Anthropology category, either in the posts themselves or in articles linked in the posts. This can be an open book test, if you want; but if it were me, I’d rather test myself to see how I do without help.

As in all the other theology quizzes, the right answers will reflect the historic Protestant (aka reformedish) faith. Look for answers on Friday.

Choose the best answer.

1. How are human beings distinguished from God’s other creatures?

• a. God providentially cares for them.
• b. God created them to represent him in a way the other creatures do not.
• c. God gave them dominion over his other creatures.
• d. all of the above.
• e. b and c above.

2. When God created him and placed him in the Garden of Eden, Adam

• a. was good and just.
• b. represented the whole human race.
• c. was able to obey God’s command.
• d. all of the above.
• e. a and c above.

3. Because Adam disobeyed God’s command in the Garden of Eden,

• a. I was born corrupt.
• b. I was born guilty.
• c. I will die.
• d. all of the above.
• e. a and c above.

4. Despite the corruption I inherited,

• a. I am not as depraved as I could possibly be.
• b. I can always trust my conscience.
• c. I was born with the ability to love God more than I love myself.
• d. none of the above.
• e. a and b above.

5. Which is not the result of the fall of man?

• a. Human beings are made in the image of God.
• b. Human beings need a Saviour.
• c. Human beings have no natural desire for God.
• d. all of the above.
• e. b and c above.

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Like quizzes? Here are more:

• Justification (Answers 1, 2, 3 and 4.)
• The Trinity (Answers)
• Scripture (Answers)
• Jesus in His Humanity (Answers)

Update on Friday, April 30, 2010 at 11:00PM by rebecca

See answer key.