Back to earth, quite literally. I spent 5 hours weeding yesterday. Before we left for Venice, I had noticed a new kind of weed proliferating throughout the garden. I ignored these slim stalks for a few days and they took advantage by inviting all their kinfolk to the party. By the time we returned from our trip, the whole enormous crop of them had dried up, turning most of our beds into brittle, grassy fields. The kicker? When you pull them up, they literally spit their seeds into your face, showering them everywhere. So we are assured of a nice big crop next year. Mother Nature sure is clever. On the flip side, she has rewarded us with so many other signs of gloriously burgeoning life. The chipmunks are back, fat and sassy, chasing each other around the yard. Woodpeckers syncopate the goings-on. The cherry tree and the lilacs are in bloom, and their sultry perfume never fails to remind me that life is sweet.
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Consider rhubarb: long, ribbed, celery-like stalks and not a seed or rind in sight. This is a vegetable, right? But in 1947, a New York court decided that since it's used as a fruit, it is  to be counted as such for the purposes of regulations and duties. Thus, with one wave of a bureaucrat's hand, does a vegetable become a fruit. Although its leaves are toxic, rhubarb's tart stalks have a long history of medicinal and culinary uses. The stuff grown in hothouses tends to be redder and sweeter than what you find in the gardeny. My big, bushy plants are of the Victoria variety—named for the British queen, whose countrymen tend to love a bit of rhubarb fool—and they are predominantly green. A clear, true, vegetal green with a flavor to match. Rhubarb is often combined with apples or strawberries. Their sweetness helps temper its rather aggressive bite, but can also overwhelm its delicate flavor, described by Alice Waters as "the smell of the earth in the spring." Wanting to showcase that, and armed with rhubarb from the garden and fresh milk from the farm, I decided to make rhubarb ice cream.
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I don't care that there's snow on the ground and that more is predicted for tomorrow, I know what I saw this weekend, and I'm not backing down from thoughts of spring. I stepped out onto the front patio on Saturday night and basked in the glow of the super perigree moon, a rare sight that happens only every 18 years or so, when the moon is about 31,000 miles closer to Earth. On Saturday it was not only closer, but totally full, and about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than normal. It shed its monstrously beautiful silver light on me and I asked for its blessing, inspiration and guidance. Kooky? Perhaps. But that day, in honor of the equinox and this moon, G and I had already gone over to our new property in Forestburgh and had a little ceremony to bless the land and imbue it with good intentions. We have such high hopes; it felt good to say them out loud with the waterfall across the lake roaring in the distance and woodpeckers flitting high above in the trees.
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Rhubarb abounds at the moment. Driving along the little country roads out here, you see many a luxuriant patch with broad, lofty, ruffly green leaves and the occasional gorgeous flower soaring above. The markets are full of the celery-like stalks in shades that range from rose to raspberry. I'd been feeling a tad deficient for having produced such adamantly green rhubarb, but then I looked up the variety we planted and it turns out Victoria rhubarb is meant to be green! Naturally, it's not the one most commercially favored, since everyone is attracted to the gaudy red stuff, but I'm now quite proud of my green stalks with the discreet hint of pink at the very base. It tastes just as wonderful, and I find the color makes a lovely counterpoint to the vivid strawberries with which it's so often paired. Food52 continues to be an inspiration (even though my strawberry-fennel ice cream, nominated last week, did not win—#$@$%#!), and I think you'll love this simple but flavorful poached rhubarb that I've topped with strawberry preserves that deliver a bit of heat. Make it now, before all that beautiful red (or green) rhubarb has seen its best days.
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Too intimidated/busy/shy/lazy to make your own pie crust? Think you'll just pick one up at the store or take a shortcut by buying one of those pre-made crusts? Think again. PRIORITIES, people. Have you ever read the ingredients on one of those pie crust packages? Blech. (If you absolutely have to use one, let it be the Keebler and not the Pillsbury; but neither will work for this recipe, thank god.) Let me lay something on you: polyunsaturated fats and hydrogenated fats are terrible for you. As in cellulite, saddle bags, Hadassah arms, heart attacks, strokes. I'll tell you more about that in an upcoming roundup on fats, but for now I want to give you my beloved and timeworn recipe for strawberry-rhubarb cobbler-ish. It just won an Editors' Pick on Food52; and so did my Cardamom-Saffron Lassi, a variation of the one I posted here!  
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I adore chutneys, with their wonderfully complex mix of flavors: hot, sour, salty, sweet. They're like a perfect storm for your tastebuds. This one combines tart rhubarb with dark brown sugar, cider vinegar, sour cherries and a host of spices and aromatics: cumin, coriander, garlic, hot chiles, ginger and fresh turmeric. Look for this last in an Indian market, or substitute a teaspoon of ground dried turmeric. It has a wonderfully bitter bite and a rich saffron color that will stain everything in sight.
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