What to do with Rhubarb

You can't find rhubarb at just any grocery store here in Cleveland. It's taken me 3 years to learn that I have to get it at the farmer's market in season if I want it. The great thing about rhubarb is that it freezes well. So now, every Saturday, I have a date with the farmer's market so I can pick up 2 or 3 bunches--I'm going to need a bigger freezer!!

- Prepping rhubarb for freezer: cut rhubarb into 1-inch pieces and place in a freezer bag. (easy!)



While thumbing through my family cookbook that my mom put together for me one year, I discovered a fun way to get more bang for your buck.

Rhubarb Juice
- put 4 cups of chopped rhubarb into a sauce pan with 2 cups water and 2 cups sugar. Cook until the rhubarb is tender (keep an eye on it so it doesn't boil over!)
- Place a strainer on a bowl (I use a glass 4-cup measuring cup) and pour rhubarb into strainer
- DO NOT PRESS PULP in the strainer



- Reserve the liquid. One option is to pour the liquid into clean ice cube trays and freeze.
- Use rhubarb pulp for pie filling--it's already cooked and sweetened so you can reduce cooking time and your pie will not be runny!





Rhubarb Mint Mocktails
- Plop 4 or 5 frozen rhubarb cubes (see above) into a glass
- Add chilled ginger ale
- Add a sprig of mint


(really wishing I had some cute little cocktail glasses! Don't mind my son's fingers, he was anxious to try some.)


Cardamom Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble (this is tweaked a bit from smitten kitchen, but credit goes to her for the original recipe!)


(smitten kitchen take 100 bajillion times better food photos than I do. Even so, this pie was amazing and the cardamom makes it really awesome!)


Filling:
- Cooked rhubarb pulp (see above)
- A bunch of strawberries (1 quart maybe???), de-stemmed and sliced (I don't remember how much I actually used because I bought my berries in bulk from costco and we ate most of them before I decided to make pie)
- 1 teaspoon cardamom
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 cup lime juice (you could use lemon)
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- Pinch of salt

Topping:
- 1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour (you can't even tell. I used this because our white flour bucket was empty and I was too lazy to go down to the basement to fill it up)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons demerara sugar (don't skip this step if possible, I love the texture of this!)
- 1 stick melted butter

Directions:
1. preheat oven to 375. mix together filling and put in a pie dish.
2. Combine die ingredients for topping, add melted butter and mix together until you get crumbles
3. Cover filling with crumble. Place pie dish on a foil-lined baking dish so you don't get sticky juice dripping down onto the bottom of your oven. bake for 25-30 minutes or until topping looks golden brown.
4. enjoy with ice cream :)

Tomorrow, I will be making Rhubarb Ice Cream with my rhubarb juice. I'll post the recipe once I come up with it--especially if it's a success!