"Can I have rhubarb crumble instead of cake?" Mateo asked me this in March, at the kitchen table, while finishing the last bowl made from a bag of rhubarb I'd frozen the spring before. His birthday was seven weeks away and the rhubarb by the back fence was a bare red knob in the mud. I said yes before I'd thought about whether the plant would cooperate.
A birthday on the porch in the rain
On Saturday, May 9, Mateo turned eleven. It rained from breakfast until bedtime, right in the middle of a cold snap that had the high stuck around 50. The party had always been planned for the porch, which is 8 feet deep, covered and long enough for a folding table, so the rain mostly changed the dress code: hoodies and every fleece blanket from the couch. His Little League game was rained out too, which he took surprisingly well.
Six kids crowded around the table with two pizzas from Main Street. The southwest corner of the porch is still taped off until Kevin comes to fix the rot on June 1, and the kids decided on their own that the tape was lava. Nobody stepped on it all afternoon.
My one contribution as an art teacher was a stack of paper folded into eight panels and a coffee can of markers on the bench. By the end there was a twelve-page comic about a groundhog who robs a pizza place. I recognized the groundhog.
Pulling rhubarb in the rain
The rhubarb crown went into the back corner by the fence in 2022, and this is its fifth spring, big enough now that we can pull from it freely. On Saturday morning I went out in the drizzle in my canvas apron and pulled eleven stalks, a little over two pounds. You twist each stalk and pull from the base rather than cutting it, and you leave at least a third of the plant standing. The leaves come off right there and go on the leaf pile. They're toxic, which I explain to every child who wanders into that corner, including my own, every single year.
Wet rhubarb stalks are something to see: deep crimson at the base, fading up into green, like a watercolor wash that ran down the page. I stood there in the rain longer than I needed to.
The crumble
This is the recipe we make every spring. It isn't fancy, which is the point.
- 6 cups rhubarb in half-inch pieces (about 2 pounds)
- 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch and the zest of one orange, tossed with the rhubarb
- For the topping: 1 cup flour, 1 cup old-fashioned oats, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and a pinch of salt
- 1 stick (8 tablespoons) cold butter, cut in and rubbed with your fingertips until it clumps
The fruit goes into a 9-by-13 dish with the topping scattered over it, and it bakes at 375 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes, until the juice bubbles thick at the edges and the top is deep gold. Rhubarb lets go of a lot of liquid, and the cornstarch is what keeps it from turning into soup. Let it sit for 20 minutes, then serve it with vanilla ice cream.
My mistake: I baked it Friday night to save time, and the topping went soft overnight in the fridge. Ten minutes in a hot oven before serving brought most of the crunch back. Next time I'll mix the topping ahead and bake the day of. Six kids still scraped the dish down to the corners.
Mother's Day, and tomatoes still in the basement
The next morning was Mother's Day. Mateo and Nate brought me pancakes and a card that was, naturally, a comic: me in my apron, chasing off a storm cloud with the galvanized watering can. It's on the fridge.
Mother's Day is my frost date, as a rule of thumb, and this year the rule is wrong. The low this week is supposed to touch 36, so the twelve tomato plants I've been hardening off went back down to the basement on Friday, and they'll wait there until the forecast settles. Maybe next weekend.
There's one square of crumble left in the fridge with Mateo's name on a sticky note. He wrote it in comic-book lettering, drop shadow and all.
