Are you enjoying rhubarb
season? When the robin nests in the cherry tree and thunderclouds
tease us by gathering every afternoon, rhubarb is ready.
I’m weeding among leaves of rhubarb the size of TV trays when a
woman stops jogging by and asks, “What’s that plant?”
“Rhubarb,” I tell her; our grandmothers called it “pie plant”
because it made such good pies. She nods as if she remembers. I
snap off a stalk and hold it up for her to taste, offering to give
her some. She backs away, mumbling about busy-ness.
Too
busy for rhubarb is too busy. I gnaw on the pink stalk, enjoying
the tart, dry flavor. When that jogger finishes her run, she’ll
probably drive to the supermarket — passing wasted rhubarb on
every street corner — to buy imported fruit.
At
this moment, many people in the Northern Great Plains are probably
no more than a half-mile from rhubarb, because our grandmothers
planted it everywhere they lived. I’ve spotted neglected and
thriving plants on street corners, between commercial buildings, in
alleys and even in back yards pounded to dust by galumphing,
inedible dogs.
Though discouraged by hot, dry weather in
the South, rhubarb is grown commercially in Washington, Oregon and
Michigan. I’ve seen it everywhere on the Northern Plains. The plant
needs cold to trigger growth, so even a hard freeze shouldn’t kill
established plants, and harvest lasts from April through September.
No wonder pioneer mothers liked the plant — no pampering
— and it was one of the first foods to grow in spring.
Imagine how that astringent flavor awakened tongues that had spent
the winter eating beans!
Known to humans for around 4,500
years, rhubarb was probably imported by a Maine gardener between
1790 and 1800, and by 1822 was sold in produce markets. Well
adapted, it’s the easiest fruit I’ve ever prepared for use: no
stems or pits to remove, no peel, no pre-cooking, no fuss.
Ninety-five percent water, rhubarb’s crisp stalks are
rich in vitamin C and dietary fiber, provide a fair amount of
potassium and minor amounts of several other vitamins, and are low
in sodium. One cup of diced rhubarb contains about 26 calories. The
oxalic acid in the leaves worries experts who think it’s poisonous
— in huge amounts. A person weighing 145 pounds might need to
eat 11 pounds of leaves to be poisoned. So, don’t eat the leaves.
Reach past the elephant-ear-sized greenery to select
stalks that are bright pink, crisp and free of blemishes; the
smallest stalks are sweetest. Slide your hand down to where the
stem emerges from the ground, and pull with a little twist. The
stalk will snap loose easily without injury to the plant.
If you take no more than one-third of the stalks from a plant at a
time, you can harvest more in a day or two. If you make my mother’s
honey rhubarb pie, you’ll have trouble waiting that long.
Mildred’s Honey Rhubarb Pie
Chop off the rhubarb
leaves and spread them under the plants as mulch. Rinse the stalks
in water, then discard the bottom inch of each. Whack the stalks
into one-inch chunks. That’s it, end of preparation!
Gently mix the other ingredients together, stir in the rhubarb, and
dump the mix into a large pie crust. The rhubarb pile may stand an
inch or two above the edges; it shrinks in cooking. Form a lattice
crust over the top. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. Then reduce
heat to 350 degrees. In South Dakota, at an elevation of 3,500
feet, I baked the pie 30 minutes at the lower temperature; at
higher elevations, the crust is lightly browned in 50 minutes.
Mother’s recipe uses just enough honey to enhance the
real flavor of the rhubarb. If you like gooey sweets, you may
prefer to find a recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie. You probably
put sugar on sweet corn, and catsup on a good steak, too.
After you polish off the pie, scour the pan with a fresh stalk
— even if you burned it.
Look for other information
about rhubarb on the Internet. Next time I see a crowd of shouting
people in a movie scene, I’ll read their lips; apparently,
directors ask extras to repeat “rhubarb” as background hubbub of
excited talk. And rhubarb even has its own Web site:
www.Rhubarbinfo.com.
Linda M. Hasselstrom is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). She writes in Cheyenne, Wyoming
and rural South Dakota.
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