Wheatless Wednesday: How to Prepare Rhubarb

Spring time brings so many wonderful vegetables and lots of color at the markets. In season right now, you'll find beautiful red celery like stalks of rhubarb.

Up until this week, when it arrived in my Farm Fresh to You box, I had oddly enough never prepared rhubarb.  I've seen it getting cooked, I've eaten it in pies and such, and have had beverages containing it, but had never used it myself. I was excited to prepare my rhubarb stalks, and to do a blog post about it.

I was a bit indecisive on what to make since I didn't have a whole lot of the stuff to work with. Finally, a friend put in a request for a rhubarb crumble and I was having a craving for lemonade.  I prepared a delicious slightly tart and tangy strawberry rhubarb lemonade for me and a rhubarb ginger crumble for the friend.


First, a few facts about rhubarb:
1. It's very fibrous so it takes between 25 to 40 minutes to cook down. The most common ways for rhubarb to be cooked are on the stove top stewed in its own juices, or with a small amount of water, or baked in the oven.
2. It's actually a vegetable, not a fruit, despite always getting treated as the latter.
3. It has an extremely tart/ sour taste! When cooked for desserts, it is typical to add 1/2 C to 3/4 C of sugar per pound of rhubarb.
4. Rhubarb leaves are poisonous and should never be eaten, raw or cooked.
5. It has long been used for medicinal purposes, most commonly as a laxative.

Now on to the recipes: 


Strawberry Rhubarb Mint Lemonade
Ingredients
4" piece rhubarb, sliced thinly
3 C water, divided
2 large strawberries, chopped 
2 T mint leaves
1 large lemon, juiced
1T agave nectar

Directions
1. Add rhubarb and 1 C water to a small pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 25 minutes, until rhubarb is soft and broken down.
2. Muddled strawberries and mint in with the rhubarb, until nicely mashed. Add lemon juice,  sweetener and remaining two cups water.
3. Fill a shaker half way with ice then top it off with some of the lemonade mixture. Strain into a glass and enjoy! YUM.

Gingery Rhubarb Crumble
Ingredients 

3 C chopped rhubarb

2 T minced or grated ginger

1/4 C + 2 T sugar (I used coconut sugar)

2 T orange juice

½ tsp ground cardamom

½ C rolled oats

1 T coconut oil

Directions 

Preheat oven to 375.

Arrange chopped rhubarb in an 8x8 baking dish. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar, cardamom and ginger, then pour orange juice over the top. Mix well.

Top with rolled oats, sprinkle with more sugar and then dot with coconut oil.

Place in oven and bake for 40 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to set for 5 minutes. 

Serve on individual plates topped with your favorite vanilla ice cream! (When I don't make it myself, I use Coconut Bliss.) Ice cream is key to cutting the tartness of the crumble.

**To be truly gluten free, make sure to use oats that are marked as such