Tuesday, July 05, 2005

My adventure with rhubarb...



What did I do when my mother-in-law sent me home with a grocery bag full of fresh-cut rhubarb? Well nothing, at first. I never cooked rhubarb before. I don't think I've ever eaten rhubarb either, except maybe years ago in some rhubarb-strawberry pie.

I asked my mother, searched the web and scoured the indexes of my cookbooks for suggestions on what to do with the rhubarb. I found rhubarb stew, rhubarb pie, rhubarb crumble, rhubarb jam...I started to feel like I was repeating that shrimp scene from the Forrest Gump movie.

Rhubarb stew seemed to be the easiest. I could make it in my crock pot and serve it as a side dish or dessert on its own or as an ice cream topping. Plus, I thought I could can it in some the of the jars leftover from making strawberry jam and give it back to my mother-in-law. That would be sweet.

Having never made rhubarb stew or rhubarb anything, I'm not sure if it was supposed to turn brown. But it did. It tastes OK, sweet and tart all at the same time. I served it hot over vanilla ice cream garnished with organic ginger snap cookies I bought at the grocery store. It's not a huge hit in our household but I like the fact that its side effect is natural internal cleansing. I read that on the internet and I hope that part is really true.

Ingredients:

6 cups of chopped rhubarb
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tsp cinnamon

  1. Stir ingredients together in crock pot.
  2. Turn on low and cook for approximately 8 hours.

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