Adirondack recipe: Rhubarb in the Garden

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Susie Middleton, the talented author of Fresh, Fast & Green, is always tinkering in her kitchen coming up with fresh recipes for all the produce from her garden. As a trained chef and former editor and current editor-at-large of Fine Cooking, Susie experiments with fresh product so that I don't have to. It is about as close as I'm going to get to a personal chef. I love to cook but I'm going to leave the recipes to Susie!

With my rhubarb popping up all over, I need some new recipes to use up the rhubarb, get my children jazzed about their school snacks and add something interesting when backyard grilling.

Rhubarb muffins? Each week my children help make muffins for their school snacks. They get to choose different recipes or make old favorites. It has become a few precious moments we spend with each other and the outcome is always delicious.

On Susie's blog, SixBurnerSue, she has pages dedicated to testing recipes from her own garden or from the test kitchens of Fine Cooking.  Well, our rhubarb needs to grow a bit taller before we can try these cinnamon-rhubarb muffins.

For myself, I am going to try the Rhubarb-Dried Cherry Chutney. It sounds wonderful. Susie recommends trying it with grilled chicken or pork. Enjoy!

Facts about Rhubarb

• It is a vegetable not a fruit

• Only the stalks should be eaten because the leaves are poisonous, containing oxalic acid.  You don't have to pull out all the rhubarb from the garden though. You would have to eat 5 lbs of leaves for it to be a toxic dose but a smaller amount to make a person/child sick. 
• The leaves can be safely placed in the compost pile.
• When harvesting rhubarb, trim the leaves immediately
• Make sure your children know to only eat the stalks and (for the very young) always under supervision. 

~ Don't forget the Rhubarb Festival during the Great Adirondack Days in Saranac Lake over July 4th weekend! 

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