Spring Tonic – Rhubarb Harvest

One of the nice things to harvest is the springtime is rhubarb. It comes in a couple of different types that I know about, they have a red stalk or green stalk as the main difference.

Here’s a picture of the red stalk variety that we harvested from our garden. To remove the leaf from the plant you pull on it carefully with a twisting motion where it attaches to the plant being careful not to harm the plants main stem.

After a long winter rainy season having something fresh from the garden is welcomed. The rhubarb plant seems to at least tolerate the weather around here but it doesn’t thrive really well. I’ve heard from friends that the green stalk variety has grown well for them.

This is the first year that the plant has done well enough to look like it could be harvested. You don’t want to take too much off the plant unless it is well established. This plant has been growing for a couple of seasons but is still very small.

In a warmer climate I think this plant would have spread out and made several more by now. It could be worth putting in a few of these plants if you want to harvest any significant amount.

Cooking

The stem on the leaf is the part that you want to eat. The leaves should not be eaten and are poisonous. (I’m not sure how poisonous but I’m not really tempted to find out)

You can eat the stem without cooking but it is pretty sour and not the best way to eat it imho, but if you have harvested a lot of it, you can have a quick snack if you like.

It cooks on the stove or the microwave very fast. Just cut it up into smaller pieces and cook covered. For a single stem like this, it only took around thirty seconds in the microwave to make a nice sauce. You can add a little sugar if you like and stir it while cooking too, whatever you like, its kind of hard to mess it up even if you try. (Well, leaving it on the stove top on high and walking a way for a while probably wouldn’t be the best plan, lol)

You can eat the sauce plain, serve it over ice cream, make it into a pie, etc. It goes well with strawberries if you have any of those around.

Anyhow, the single rhubarb stem we harvested made three little bowls like this:

It was good eating, but I was wishing I had more. It could be time to plant a few more rhubarb plants since it seems like it is not spreading. (You can’t really expect one lonely rhubarb plant to “go forth and multiply,” I suppose – especially with things eating it.)

Photographing

It was actually a bit difficult to get a realistic photo of the sauce for some reason. I took three different photos but the white balance and color didn’t look quite right. Even with adjustments in software the pink sauce kind of looked too red. Adjusting the picture in software can make it look better but here’s an original just as it came from the camera to show what I mean:

I used the special ‘food’ photography mode of the S9+ and I’m not sure if that was changing the way the color came out or what. The combination of natural light and fluorescent lights made for an interesting picture. I keep trying different things and it is fun to learn more about the camera.

Thanks for reading! I always value your support and comments. The pictures were taken by me with my Galaxy S9+.