Thursday, April 20, 2017

R is for RHUBARB and RENSHI #AtoZChallenge

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
My daily #AtoZ posts combine two concepts in under-300-words per day:
an appealing food choice along with thoughts that spring to mind.
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Pies, sauce, or wild stalks pulled straight from the ground! Rhubarb was a staple food when I was growing up in rural Wisconsin. Mom had a terrific garden that included a corner for the unwieldy stalks of rhubarb. She cultivated with care and turned the stalks into heavily sweetened pies.
 
 
An earlier AtoZ post discussed the use of a Foley Food Mill to grind up apples for apple sauce. In our house, that same mill was utilized to make rhubarb sauce, except the stringy pulp of the stalks made it more difficult to mash out the sauce. Lots of sugar went into making rhubarb sauce, also.
 
 
As kids, we had free run of the fields and woods out in the country. We often found wild rhubarb and braved the obvious sour-face to chomp on a barely cleaned stalk fresh pulled from the earth. Again, that stringy pulp - hard to pull out from between the teeth. Sort of an early flossing mechanism.

Thoughts of my childhood are dotted with images of food, whether at home or away.
Does the mention of specific foods bring back memories for you?

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Below are the final words of a short, renshi-style poem, entitled  A Magical Adventure, which looks back at childhood visits to my Gramma Anna and Gramma Julia:

Childhood
in retrospect
outshines the brightest star.
 
If you would like to sample my linking poetry, please visit my #AtoZChallenge poetry-themed blog site: http://poetryfromthelanai.blogspot.com

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5 comments:

  1. It has been over a decade since I had rhubarb. Enough sugar in the stew, it is wonderful.

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    1. It would not be edible without tons of sugar, Jacqui. I'll never know how we managed to chew on the stalks straight from the ground.

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  2. Rhubarb pie. Yum! My sisters and I had a knack for getting into the poison ivy while roaming the woods near our home in Wisconsin. Other than that memory, your poem says it all.

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    1. Guess I was really lucky. Where I lived in Wisconsin, I never ran into any poison ivy. Wasn't quite so lucky in Minnesota, though.

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  3. Strawberry rhubarb pie - my all time favorite (and very hard to find).

    DB McNicol | Oh, the places we will go! | Tennessee & Texas

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