Rhubarb Season

My Article for the P.A. Shopper May 30, 2011

Rhubarb season is here. If I hadn’t discovered, last year, THE BEST RHUBARB CAKE RECIPE EVER, rhubarb season could have come and gone and I wouldn’t even have noticed. Two years ago, we dug up our patch of rhubarb, as it was encroaching on our raspberries, and there was rhubarb readily accessible at our son’s place if I ever needed any. We had company over to watch our Ken Davis video last weekend, and there was the opportunity to make my rhubarb cake! What I really like on this cake is the wonderful topping, which surprised me the first time I made it.

THE BEST RHUBARB CAKE EVER

Base: 2 cups flour
1 cup margarine
¼ cup icing sugar
½ tsp salt

Mix and press into 9 x 13 pan. Bake 12 minutes at 375 degrees.

Cover with 3-4 cups of thinly sliced rhubarb.
Sprinkle one small package of strawberry jello crystals over the rhubarb.

Topping: 1½ cup sugar
¾ cup flour
½ cup melted margarine

Spread on surface of rhubarb. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

ENJOY!

Our friends and relatives in southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been praying the rain would STOP. The water from the snow melt in our daughter’s yard in Pierson, Mb. had just all dried up (maybe a week or two), and she now says they need a boat to get around again!!! It was almost getting to the point we’d have to pray the rain would START here – our new patch of seeded grass required watering every day and then it only wet the very top of the ground. Our front lawn and garden were dry as a bone. We were very happy to get the nice rain on the weekend, even though it arrived precisely at the time my husband and son were resuming siding on the front of his house in town… I think they got three rows done before the sky opened up. What a difference new siding makes! It seemed that with the rain, our front lawn grew three inches over night!

We are in the process of looking for another cat. Our daughter’s beloved cat that she had gotten last October died in March, of natural causes, we believe. A friendly, adult, long-haired, “fixed” cat is what we are looking for. Our little Maltese dog is probably saying to herself “enough with the cats already”, but we really do love to have a cat in our home. The SPCA sees us looking frequently, but we have not brought anything home yet.

It is amazing how “life goes on” despite the devastation many people have suffered in Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and even Slave Lake, Alberta, and southern Manitoba and Quebec, in Canada! We have seen some of the rebuilding required down south with Mennonite Disaster Service, but nothing like what we have seen on T.V. and on our computer in the last week. The most revealing devastation on Facebook is a superimposed picture of part of Joplin, Missouri, before and after the tornado. And even thinking about how the people of Japan are surviving after their devastating earthquake and tsunami is unimaginable – we hear very little about how they are coping and getting their lives back on track. We can certainly count our blessings each and every day that things carry on in a “normal” fashion, and pray for those who are living in uncertainty, wondering if anything will ever be normal again.