poliphilo: (Default)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2012-07-29 02:26 pm

Rhubarb

Dot has rhubarb in her garden. We picked a bunch the other day. She and Ailz won't eat it but I will. Their loss. I cook it up with ginger and brown sugar and serve it with cream.

[identity profile] pondhopper.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
I LOVE rhubarb. It was in my grandmother's garden. We don't have any in Spain (it doesn't grow where we live as it's too hot and dry) but last May we went to France and I brought back a huge bunch of rhubarb from our friend's garden and made strawberry-rhubarb pies and rhubarb compote. YUM

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Ailz was put off rhubarb for life when she learned a relative was growing it in pig manure. I've never let considerations like that put me off.

It's expensive in the shops. I was thrilled when I found out Dot had some. If we hadn't intervened she'd have left it to rot.

[identity profile] chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 06:11 pm (UTC)(link)
When my mother was a child, a neighbor of her mother's always had the thickest, yummiest rhubarb--no one could grow rhubarb as wonderful as hers! She had so much that she supplied all the neighborhood women with her superior rhubarb.

Finally my grandmother asked what her secret was for growing it so successfully.

"Oh," said the woman, "Every morning, I just dump the piss pot out on it!" (The "piss pot" would be the chamber pot that they used so they didn't have to go out to the out house in the middle of the night. LOL.


My grandmother gave that woman's rhubarb to the pigs and chickens after learning that.

I think I'd just water my own rhubarb with my own urine! It gets purified in the transformation, I'm sure.

When I was growing up, we always fertilized our vegetable garden with cow manure. We had the best vegetables in the universe!

It's the circle of life, in my opinion.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
It's odd. I think I might turn up my nose at rhubarb watered with human urine, but the pig shit doesn't bother me. I can't really account for the difference but there is one. I think it may have something to do with the taboo on cannibalism.

[identity profile] chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)
That sounds delicious. I've never thought of cooking it up with ginger. Did you use fresh ginger or the dried powder?

I like to cook it up with apples and raisins and a little bit of cornstarch and honey.

My mother makes hers with a lot of sugar and a package of strawberry gelatin.

When I was a child, I'd just pull out out a stalk and eat it with salt. I thought it was deliciously sour. :D

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 07:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I always keep fresh ginger in stock. I make a lot of apple sauce- and it just isn't the same without ginger.

Raw rhubarb and salt: I'm not sure I fancy that. One bite maybe, just for the experience.

[identity profile] chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com 2012-07-30 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
I tried it as an adult, and it just wasn't the same.

[identity profile] ooxc.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I love rhubarb, provided it's ripe - why do "they" insist on selling it green?

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 07:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Does it ripen once it's picked? I wouldn't have thought so.

[identity profile] ooxc.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know - I've never bought or picked it green

[identity profile] qatsi.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
As a child, we had rhubarb that grew and grew, and I ate lots of it. Regrettably I've not been able to reproduce that success.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 07:08 pm (UTC)(link)
I think we got ours from the lady next door.