compote | silkannthreades

It is the season for plums. It is the time for plum deliciousness.

Season for Plums

Plums make:

a perfectly delightful gift for a friend;

Plums, pretty and perfect and a delicious gift

and a beautiful, bounteous, table decoration;

Laden with Plums

;

A Vase of Plums

Plums make delectable eatables:

like gleaming, sugar-shimmering, baked compote;

Baked Plums for the Table

and rich coffee cake.

Plum Coffee Cake

[ take a slice, please do 🙂 ]

An invitation to a slice

And plums are fabulous for frivolous fool…ishness ;

: Frothy, frivolous

: Frilly

: Fools

and golden jam,

Jono’s Jam

and plums make a jolly good story, too, don’t they? 😉

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In my previous post, I mentioned eating rhubarb compote with my rice bread. https://silkannthreades.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/rice-bread-and-blossom/ The rhubarb was fresh, young, spring rhubarb from my garden. And the very first rhubarb I have grown.

The growing season before last, a good friend gave me a corm from her beautiful, bountiful rhubarb plant. I planted it in a big, blue pot in sweet spot near my back door and let it be, as one should, for its first season.

Big Blue Pot of Rhubarb

This past weekend, I noticed that a few stalks on the rhubarb were ready for picking; only just ready, but I was so anxious to try my own home-grown rhubarb that I couldn’t leave them on the plant any longer. I harvested a few stalks,

Spring Rhubarb

Leaf

Rhubarb

Spring Rhubarb

Leaf and stalk

Leaf

cooked them the merest amount( and even that was too much because the stalks were so tender!); added some sugar and there it was …..rhubarb compote, (aka stewed rhubarb 🙂 ), to be tasted one careful teaspoon at a time. Delicious, if over-mushed.

Rhubarb compote

Now for a few fun facts about rhubarb.

Rhubarb is a vegetable. It’s true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb

Rhubarb is the word actors utter repeatedly and softly to emulate background conversation. Its use is “Attributed to the practice by Charles Kean‘s theatre company c1852 at Princess Theatre, London of actors supposed to be talking together inaudibly, repetitively saying the word rhubarb, which was chosen because it does not have any harsh-sounding consonants or clear vowels. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rhubarb

Rhubarb is the title of a 1969 film by Eric Sykes where the only word used is Rhubarb. The film was remade in to a short television comedy in 1980 called Rhubarb Rhubarb.