rhubarb wins the garden
I tend to think of rhubarb as a spring food, like asparagus: one that comes in early but then gives way to other things as the summer moves along. But that's not really the case, in actual fact, rhubarb comes in early and then keeps going strong all summer long! It's just that the novelty of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and apples each in their season makes us forget about it. Now, in early October, strawberries and blueberries are long gone; a few of the raspberries are producing their second crop of the season but not enough to bring inside; and the apples are actually almost done (they were early to begin with and our heaviest tree by far was the Macintosh). And last Thursday I harvested eight cups of rhubarb to make a crisp.
It was the same recipe I raved about in this post, and it remains my favorite dessert that I hardly ever make. Why do I hardly ever make it? Not because the rhubarb is hard to get—clearly not!—but because it's so delicious, and so unappreciated by the rest of my family, that I eat too much of it on each day that it exists (also it calls for orange zest and we don't often have oranges in the house in the non-winter months; I had to make a special trip to get one). At least this time I was able to bring it along to school, where the other adults and children of middle- and high school-age were able to enjoy it.
Funnily enough, just like that first time back in 2016 I had leftover butter pecan ice cream to go with the crisp. That's really a coincidence: we rarely buy ice cream, and when we do it's rarely butter pecan. And I didn't ever realize it until I looked up that old post to link it!