Tag: rhubarb

  • Monsters Stirring Out of the Ground

    RhubarbShoots

    Yesterday it was nettles popping out of the earth. Today it is rhubarb pushing out of the soil. Rhubarb unfolds like a monster rising from a deep sleep. At this early stage, it looks like an alien fungus threatening to take over the world. The leaves don’t look like leaves. They look like deformed, wrinkled green stones. But once they shake the soil out of their folds, they will quickly rise and become bold, fragrant, massive leaves.

    Few things are as satisfying as sauce made from just-cut rhubarb stocks. It’s a staple here from spring into early summer. You can put it on most any dish from rice to roasted potatoes to meats to vegetables to ice cream. During hot summer days, the chickens seek shade under their tall, spreading leaves.

  • Out of the Garden Today – August 1, 2014

    ForSupper20140801

    Growing your own food enables you to appreciate the fact that eating food is eating growing things. The vegetables I grow vary from year to year. A few years back, we were eating pea pods all summer long. This year, chard is a mainstay. The great thing about chard is that a single plant will provide many meals. Let the leaves get to a good size, cut the whole plant down to about an inch or two above the ground, and in a week or two, it will produce another handful of leaves for another meal. You can do this for several months.

    Chard, rhubarb, onions, and leaks. Those are tonight’s vegetables. Steam a mountain of chard and serve it with rhubarb sauce on the side. There’s a combination that will have you begging for more. Your chances of finding chard and rhubarb sauce in a restaurant? Next to nil I think.

    Here are some references I found regrading chard and rhubarb:

    First up were the chard rolls. This was the vegetarian option for the evening and was a wonderful surprise. The chard rolls are filled with brown rice and sweet potato and are served over sorrel sauce with a side of asparagus… Prairie Plate: A Sustainable Restaurant by Sara Sawatzki


    Hacking the leaves from a bunch of thick-stalked summer rhubarb last night, it struck me as a terrible waste that those leaves are so poisonous. It seems wrong to put something so lush and healthy on the compost. Indeed, some old-school gardeners won’t even do that, and a few allotments ban them too, even though there is no proof the leaves do any harm once rotted down. Thank goodness for the green and ruby stalks though, with their knife-sharp edge to cut through the sweetness of pastry or crumble… Nigel’s chard and rhubarb recipes


    This is a recipe designed for “chefs” like me, who choose their recipes on titles alone, not bothering to look at the ingredient list until the last minute. For those who are more inclined to think ahead, to peruse the component ingredients, thinking about how the flavors work together, you might be a bit stymied, if not downright turned off… Tofu With Hot And Sour Rhubarb Sauce


    The earth goddess was exercising her sense of humor when she came up with rhubarb–not a fruit, not exactly a vegetable, poisonous leaves, medicinal roots. “Let’s see if they figure this one out,” she was chuckling to herself. I suspect rhubarb’s reputation as something old-fashioned, sour and stringy is because of its rather unappetizing name. (It comes from “rha of the barbarians”, which refers to its origins in Siberia near the river Rha, now the Volga).… A Cook’s Guide: Rhubarb Rehab


    Due to some bad labeling from our stock photo supplier, our page design team mistakenly placed a picture of Swiss chard on the page, and the error was not caught before the newspaper went to press … Is it Swiss chard or rhubarb