A Tonic for Spring Susan Apps-Bodilly Photo.

When I was a kid the first thing to pop out of the ground after the snow disappeared and frost left the ground was rhubarb.   It’s tough stuff.  I don’t remember it ever not coming up.

I grew up liking most everything on my plate.  But there was and continues to be an exception: rhubarb sauce.  That stuff was awful.  Pa insisted we eat it.  He said it was necessary to cleanse our body from winter and be prepared for spring. Ma’s recipe was simple:

                        3-4 cups chopped rhubarb

                        1 cup sugar

                        1/3 cup of water.

Put rhubarb pieces in a medium cooking pot, add sugar and a bit of water.  Start with medium heat, and then reduce to let it simmer as soon as it begins to bubble and boil.  Let simmer until the rhubarb cooks down, which should take about 25 minutes.  Let cool and keep in refrigerator.

            Curious as I am about these things, I begin wondering if my dad was onto something with his insistence that eating rhubarb sauce was a way to prepare our bodies for spring.   Five thousand years ago, dried Rhubarb roots were considered a medicine by the Chinese.

 It is a mild laxative.  But on the plus side, rhubarb is a good source of dietary fiber, has lots of vitamin C and K, plus calcium and potassium.  And as much as I detest rhubarb sauce, rhubarb crisp ranks right up there with apple crisp. And don’t forget about strawberry-rhubarb pie, rhubarb muffins, and rhubarb cake. But don’t eat the leaves as they are poisonous and can cause breathing difficulty and burning in the mouth.  Rhubarb leaves are not poisonous to the touch.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Eat your rhubarb sauce.  It’s good for you.

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WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS:

To learn more about rhubarb, go to my daughter and my book, OLD FARM COUNTRY COOKBOOK. You can buy my books at your local bookstore. order online from bookshop.org, or purchase from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering, or contact the librarian: barnard@wildroselibrary.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street