My love of rhubarb harks back to my earliest childhood memories. When i was very young we lived in a small pink house my father built. Next door was a parsonage with a 'church yard' that the neighborhood children commandeered each summer from dawn to dusk for games of tag, hide and seek or red rover. We knew the exact time that we would be required to end our play by the first flicker of lightening bugs in the paling sky. Dads would whistle, moms would call out and we reluctantly dispersed until morning when our sleepy heads would gradually emerge from home and our play could begin again. That was a glorious time in my life.
It was during that time that i developed a passionate love for the tart and sweet taste of rhubarb stew. There was a large patch of it growing wild in the old church garden and i would monitor the elephantine leaves as they unfurled from the ground each May. When the telltale pink stems turned ruby red i knew it was time to run home and tell my mother it was "time for stew".
Since becoming a grownup :) I have grown rhubarb in my garden as long as i have had a patch of dirt to call my own. And I have collected a multitude of recipes having tried just about all of them at one time or another. I've made rhubarb breads, muffins, cookies and jams. We've tried rhubarb crisps, cobblers and tarts. I've stewed it, eaten it in cold soup and dolloped it warm over vanilla ice cream. I have two favorites that i make each season yet never tire of. Fresh rhubarb pie like you see here and a fabulous recipe for rhubarb chutney. Which by the way i tore my kitchen apart looking for this past weekend. Ahhhh another vote for getting all those recipes sorted, organized and stored properly. As far as the pie crust goes i have a Tasty Tweets Show demonstrating the tried and true method i learned when i was a clueless pie maker in my twenties.
What fresh food do you most associate with the summers of your childhood? What place of honor does it have in your life now?