"Because it has an h!"
Ah hah! I know so little about rhubarb, I didn't even know how to spell it. My mom grows some by our shed for my grandma, but I've somehow managed to never eat it, at least as far as I know. Yesterday I picked up my first box of veggies from our CSA (community supported agriculture) from Grant family Farms. I just showed up at a house a few blocks down the hill, crossed my name off the list, loaded up the veggies from a purple box into a bag, and was on my merry way. (You can still join if you're interested!) Of course, you have to ask yourself, what exactly is in season this time of year at 40 degrees North latitude? Well, I'll tell you: lettuce. Here's the stuff that were supposedly in my box: rhubarb, spinach, cilantro, parsley, butter lettuce, leaf lettuce, green onions, bag of salad greens. I don't think I see the spinach, but there's some big stemmy-leafy thing in there that could be anything. I don't know just yet if it is what they say it is.
Regardless, I got the list of things on Sunday, so I strategically planned out meals for the week as best I could and got the ingredients necessary on Monday from the store. Things to make with my veggies, among other things I need to use up: Pad Thai, strawberry-rhubarb pie, grilled chicken salads, salads, stir fry, eggplant parm (made it, not so stoked about it, not going to share the recipe with you), home made ravioli, oh, and did I mention salads? If you have any other ideas for what to do with gobs of yummy lettuce, I'd appreciate your sharing it below!
Last night I made the pie as soon as I got home with the veggies. Off the top of my head, here's how the recipe went:
I had 2 long pieces of rhubarb, I took off the outer stringy layer, then cut it into 1-inch pieces.
I had a pound of strawberries that I cleaned and sliced.
I added 1 cup of sugar, 4 Tbsp tapioca, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and a dash of salt and nutmeg for the pie filling.
I found a bag of gluten free pie crust mix in my closet which was probably two years old and rolled that out. If I wouldn't have found this, I was going to use some of my new Jules Gluten Free Flour and a standard pie crust recipe. The crust I used was almond and rice based and was awful to work with, but I rolled it out and called it crust. The flavor on the crust was really good in the end and probably worth the trouble.
I threw all of this in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes and 350 for 45 minutes.
It was fabulous! The sweet strawberry with the tart rhubarb really makes me happy! You know what else makes me happy? I used two in-season ingredients and one of them was grown locally. Unfortunately, my strawberries came all the way from California. Imagine the gasoline burned to bring them all the way to me! ::Sigh:: I should have gotten a fruit share as well.
For those of you who actually have strawberries locally available to them, try this cold strawberry pie recipe that I've blogged about in the past.
For dinner, I threw some chicken breasts on the grill, washed up a little bit of every kind of green we got in my salad spinner, and had salads topped with grilled corn from the cob, grilled chicken, cherry tomatoes, carrots, and cashews. Here's some dressing ideas for summer salads from an old post. Yesterday I made a huge bottle of balsamic dressing. I had a 1 cup olive oil, 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar, then added 1 Tbsp Parmesan cheese, 2 cloves of roasted, minced garlic, and 1/4 tsp salt and pepper. Simple enough!
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