Rhubarb and chocolate

Dear Emily,

Your ice cream sounds fabulous! I have a little icecream maker but have hardly any room in the freezer to freeze the container right now. Your recipe makes me want to make room right now!

Rhubarb and chocolate, and mint, have been on the menu at our house this week. We have had company so not much has been happening here aside from visiting and eating. It has been a fun week and I have done more baking in the last few days than I have in the last few months. Our youngest guest, who is eight, asked of I bake like this every day. The answer was no way! One of the bonuses of having guests is that you can bake and then it is gone all at once and you don't have all the dessert hanging around the house tempting you.

I have a rhubarb plant that I planting last summer from one our mom divided. I harvested it for the first time yesterday, after asking Mom how to do it. This is what she replied to my email asking how:

Pull off the biggest stalks, or the reddest ones. Usually they are the newest ones, the ones in the center. Any are good, though.You pull on each stalk and it comes loose at the base. Don't cut them off, pull them. Then cut the leaf off at the base, where it was connected to the plant. About 2" is all you have to cut off. You don't want to harvest more than a third at a time. It takes about 10-15 for a pie.

I'm glad I asked. I would have cut the stalks off instead of pulling. I made a rhubarb custard pie using a recipe from one of our family's favorite cookbooks:

It was such a simple recipe, eggs, sugar, flour, nutmeg, and rhubarb. And so delicious - sweet and sour with no need for strawberries to cut the tartness.

 

For those who don't like rhubarb (mainly Paul) I made cookie bars with these. They are Nestlé Tollhouse Dark Chocolate and Mint chips and I could not find an image on their website. Maybe they dont make them anymore? I first found them at Christmas and after that they were hard to find. When I did, I bought several packages. The cookie recipe on the package is fantastic and tastes like those creme de menthe brownies without all the work. And taste way better than Girl Scout Thin Mints. Because I had limited time and because cookies are not my favorite thing to bake because of all the scooping and in and out of the oven I made them into bars instead. They were so good!

Now I am going to clean the house. We are having different company for dinner tonight. And I still have to finish rearranging the kids clothes. And get Anthony packed because we send him to the beach for a week tomorrow. Sniff sniff. It will be the first time he has been away for more than a night or two.

XOXO

Monica