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 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.
So there you have it. Who knew a spring vegetable in a blue pot could be so much fun?
Rhubarb Rhubarb
Rhubarb
Rhubarb
CUSTARD (what actors say when they are bored with Rhubarb 🙂 )
