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The Rhubarb Festival supports the work of CHUM, a social safety net organization here in Duluth.
Here's an ad for the 2015 festival:
Comments:
I came into a very vigorous rhubarb plant when I bought my house... since then, I've been looking for options beyond strawberry rhubarb pie. Minnesota cookbook author, Kim Ode, showed me the way: Rhubarb Renaissance, is a cook book dedicated to the stalk.
RHUBARB
Come midmorning, my sister and I
Would be shooed from the sandbox
To pick a dozen stalks of rhubarb
For that day’s pie.
There is a knack to picking rhubarb.
Grab too high and you snap the stalk.
Grab too low and you lose the leverage
For that crucial tug from the root,
Like pulling a boot from spring’s muddy gumbo.
Then we would take our lives in our hands
Lopping off leaves coursing with enough poison
To kill a congregation –
Or so we’d come to believe
Given the stern order never to taste them.
The work was both gratifying and disconcerting,
Entrusted to wield foliage so deadly
We could not feed it even to the hogs,
Bur heaved the leaves into the ditch
Onto a wilting mound that grew with every pie.
So, if I hesitate over that first bite,
It’s only a flicker of remembering how it felt
To bring those stalks into the house,
Hoping we had not been trusted too much.
–Kim Ode (found on the MN Historical Society site)
Rhubarb leaves aren't safe to eat, but they are safe in compost. The oxalic acid, which is toxic, breaks down quickly.
(Esther Derby)
