Green Options

I confess, I’m slow to change.  At least when it comes to cooking.  A devout recipe follower, I measure my cups and teaspoons and follow recipe direction as if they were sent from above.

Until this week, when I finally took our new solar oven out of the box.  We bought this Global Sun Oven last winter to use at our farm and B&B, Inn Serendipity, with all good intentions.  No plug in required, just open it up and heat up and bake.

Which is where I got stuck, as I would not only be cooking out of my box, I’d be cooking out of my kitchen.  But my husband, John, helped by setting it up for the first time, conducting a mini-science project that even our seven-year old could handle of angling it to garner maximum solar gain.  I had one of my new favorite pies ready to stick in the oven (“Strawberry and Rhubarb Streusel Pie” – recipe below), and took it outside instead.

Rhubarb must often feel like the underdog of the gardening world. While everyone lusts after things like the first greens, peas and asparagus, rhubarb tends to fall into more of a love-hate relationship with folks: Either you crave it and know exactly how to transform it from pie plant to something amazing, or you had it once and swore off it forever.

But rhubarb takes on a deeper meaning for me each spring, as it pops up ruby red and ready in my Wisconsin garden on our farm. Call rhubarb my Yoda in the garden: if I take the time to be mindful, rhubarb reminds me of all those big picture life values I always need a gentle nudge on, especially during the busy spring gardening time. Here are some wise nuggets from rhubarb (followed by my favorite rhubarb recipe: Rhubarb Custard Bars):

1. Perennials Rock (and Simplify Life)
Every spring, without any shout out from me, the rhubarb reliably pops up in the garden. Now I realize this observation isn’t anything new, but that concept of “perennial” was something totally novel to my husband, John, and I when we moved to our farm over a decade ago, leaving the Chicago urban scene behind. We grew up in the land of the suburbs where everyone planted the flats of petunias and other annuals every spring, so the idea that something regularly appears with no effort on our part ranked utterly amazing.

Happens every year here in the Midwest — that week when the mercury peaks, the garden wilts and everyone droops and sweats. My motivation to harvest produce, much less cook it, fades as fast as an ice cube on the driveway.

Wait — save that ice cube. As a matter of fact, bring out all the ice trays. When temperature and humidity rise, there’s only one word that inspires us through: blender drinks. And look no further than the humble rhubarb for cocktail inspiration that frappes local flavor with a new twist on happy hour.

You have to admit, rhubarb could use a new recipe twist, something other than pie or cobbler. For the gardeners with prolific rhubarb patches, bet you could use a recipe that uses twelve cups of this vegetable that thinks its a fruit.

This cocktail recipe uses a rhubarb-sugar syrup as the base, blended with ice and rum. If you’re in more of a margarita mood, blend with tequila. For a non-alcoholic version, mix equal parts of the syrup with plain seltzer. The syrup readily freezes and is easiest (and most energy efficient on a hot day) made in the crock-pot.

Here’s the Rhubarb Cocktail recipe, using the sugar syrup

In junior high school, I had a quirky music teacher (is there any other kind?) who would occasionally launch into monologues on a myriad of topics including, but not limited to: what a loser her ex-boyfriend was; amusing malapropisms from her overbearing opera coach, Hilde; and life “on the stage.” I remember these well because it was the first inkling I had that teachers carried on real lives outside of the confines of school, but also because there were a few key phrases that have managed to remain in my addled brain since. One of these was “rhubarb and spinach.” During rehearsals for our production of Guys and Dolls, the music teacher instructed us to repeat this phrase in low voices whenever we were supposed to evoke a low din during a street or party scene. Our music teacher assured us that extras in movies are instructed to repeat the phrase and that it was a standard acting method. To this day, I can’t look at rhubarb without thinking, “and spinach.”