It feels a bit like cheating to devote precious column inches to a recent article I came across. I will, nevertheless, and seek leniency in exchange for this kernel of insight. An excerpt from Orion Magazine, a story entitled, “We Can Marvel at the Rhubarb,” lightly edited.
Interviewer: “Your garden and plants within it offer your family alternative models for responding to the world, how to dwell in a beauty and diversity of your own making, surrounded by metaphors for resistance, reclamation, and joy. What is your favorite plant as metaphor that currently dwells in your garden?”
Camille Dungy (author, Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Orion’s poetry editor): “The rhubarb in the backyard is beginning the first stage of unfurling right now. That plant consistently amazes me. I love how it seems to completely disappear every year. Then it comes back in early spring, rising bigger and bigger, and growing more and more green with the warming sun and lengthening days. Most parts of the rhubarb plant are of no use to humans. Some summers, I harvest edible stalks, some years I don’t. I never water that patch. I usually forget to augment the plot with compost. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Every year in April and May, that rhubarb will wake from a long winter’s rest and start to grow bigger and stronger, providing shelter for bunnies, and producing stalks I can convert into sweet treats. I don’t want to call this a metaphor. I think of rhubarb as a concrete example of how to lead a consistent, robust, self-sufficient life.”
My love of rhubarb is longstanding: its tang, its profusion, its thriving despite neglect. Most of our sizeable crop eventually finds its way into “rhubarb crunch” (see below), the signature year-‘round dessert at our home. My objective is to use the last bulging freezer bag just as this year’s crop comes in, although two bags wait in ready reserve this year. We now gift stalks -- a dozen or more at a time -- to receptive dear ones. A recent guest boarded a plane home to California with a large carry-on stash, plastic grocery bags tightly binding both root and leaf ends.
Part of my ardor is sentimental. Maternal grandparents had prolific roots at their garden’s edge. Grandma’s rhubarb sauce and cakes are cherished childhood memories. Another relative’s farm boasted a massive patch. We harvested from this bounty in 1980 intent on making rhubarb wine. Many of these bottles were tucked into the back of the U-Haul when we moved to Philadelphia in January, 1981. Frankly, the wine was pretty awful… and yes, we savored every drop during those first three months of Paula’s MBA program.
Five years later, we hosted a backyard picnic fundraiser in support of a musical organization where I served on the board: the first-ever “rhubarbeque”. Every menu item -- plus a hand-drawn invitation -- featured rhubarb. The main course was grilled chicken slathered in a homemade rhubarb barbeque sauce… apparently, I’d discovered a recipe. Some twenty-five people attended and, if memory serves, we took in six-hundred bucks (equivalent to $1,660 today). Perhaps we’ll attempt that again someday…
I’m sharing my favorite rhubarb recipe, from a well-loved St. Ansgar “Music Mothers Cookbook” of the 1970s, not merely because it’s tasty, it’s also flexible and forgiving, meaning you can play with the tart-to-sweet ratio. I generally use five or six cups of rhubarb and make it a HEAPING cup of old-fashioned oats. (If using frozen rhubarb, thaw and drain off some of the liquid or your dessert will be too soupy.) Don’t be misled by the name, it’s more a “crumble” than a “crunch”. Serve with ice cream or a generous dollop of whipped cream. Mmmm.
My obvious conclusion, in agreement with Camille Dungy: rhubarb is an essential ingredient for a consistent, robust, self-sufficient life.
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