Alternatively titled - “A Lesson In Reading The Recipe Beforehand”

Alternatively titled - “Don’t Eat The Rhubarb Raw”

Alternatively titled - “Make Sure You Have Oil Before Baking”

Alternatively and more appropriately titled: “From Dirt To Dinner - Rhubarb”

All righty. Pull up a seat. It’s time to cook some rhubarb.

I decided to go with this recipe I saw via Pioneer Woman/Tasty Kitchen - Rhubarb Muffins.

First, I want to point out that neat little note in the recipe about what to do if you have no buttermilk, which, in fact, was quite true for me this morning. I’m not a fan of buttermilk, honestly. The first few times I obtained some for recipes, whenever I opened it I thought it had gone majorly bad. Eventually I learned that’s just what it smells like - rank. So I was planning on just using some regular milk I’d gotten through my buying club. But then I saw that note on there about mixing the milk with a TB of vinegar and letting it sit for 5 minutes. Um, Ok, I shall.

Now let’s go string and chop some rhubarb. Why am I showing you a photo of rhubarb standing up against my dishwasher? I dunno, I just want to illustrate what we’re talking about here in case you’ve never worked with it, and so that if you are ordering it via a buying club or something you can know what to expect. It’s so that, you know, in the event that you need some rhubarb for say, a recipe carnival coming up on your blog, you don’t go a little crazy and order two freaking pounds of it, resulting in your receipt of exactly eight stalks of rhubarb roughly the size of a small child.

Ok, the recipe says we need 2 cups of it chopped. I’m going to estimate 3 stems. Stalks. I’m sorry I just can’t call these stems, despite the fact that that’s what they are . . .

String it (I just started that first cut with a knife):

Slice it:

It smells kind of interesting, almost like working with greens or arugula or something. Think I’ll taste it.

It’s a little sour.

Yeah, don’t do that. That’s not good. But look, 3 stalks ended up being just a bit over 2 cups.

Now on to mixing up my wet ingredients. Um, one and a half cups of brown sugar sounds like an awful lot to me. I’m going to go with one.

Yeah, just checked the pantry; I have no oil. Yep, there it is on the grocery list, where it does me no good since I’ve clearly done nothing about that…ummmmm…looks like I have exactly one-half cup of olive oil left. Going with it. And while I’m wrecking things, I’m also going to replace the regular sugar in the recipe with honey, because I have local honey, and because I’d just rather. Plus I didn’t use all the brown sugar so maybe the sweeter honey will help. In we go.

Ok, wasn’t supposed to do that. Was just reading the recipe more closely trying to find out when to add the 1 TB of melted butter, and that would be along with the sugar and cinnamon AT THE END, because it’s a TOPPING. Let’s just pretend I added the honey on purpose to balance out the fact that I am using less sugar, a brilliant choice, really.

So what do we have so far? Um, a bowl of goo with not enough brown sugar, olive oil instead of, well, any other kind of oil, really, and a totally unnecessary 1/3 cup of honey, just thrown in for effect. Shall we continue? Let’s.

Now I’ll mess with this recipe more by substituting in some whole wheat flour for the regular. Usually when I do a recipe for the first time I do about 1/3 of the flour as whole wheat and then with each time after I increase the ratio a bit until it feels like too much whole wheat. This one is calling for 2 1/2 cups flour. I’m going with 1 1/2 cups regular all-purpose and 1 cup whole wheat pastry.

Ok, I’m not changing anything else. But I am definitely noticing that from a “local” standpoint I have no idea where my items such as baking soda and powder have come from. These are things I guess I take for granted and don’t think much about, you know? Um, and my vanilla is from Madagascar. . . something to work on, I suppose.

All righty, filling muffin pan and am thinking this really looks like an awful lot of batter for 12 muffins…yeah, there’s no way …oh, right. Recipe is for 24 muffins. Awesome. Now let me go back through and scoop out some batter from every single hole.

I’m really rockin’ it this morning, don’t you think?

Ok, I’m supposed to make this topping now that was mentioned above, but I’m so done. I’m going with my little pre-mixed thing of cinnamon and sugar I keep on hand. Forget about it.

Ok, first round is done and second is slopped in with some cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top.

Muffin, you’d better be good. I mean, how can you not be, what with being filled with sour rhubarb and olive oil and all.

Now, I shall eat you.

Ok, I know you won’t believe me, but these are actually pretty good! No, seriously, they aren’t sour, but a little tart, I’d say. They’re not at all unlike an apple muffin.

Let’s check the verdict.

Sam is pleasantly surprised. He gives them a thumbs up (which is what he gives to everything he is willing to ingest).

Robby seems to like them too.

Oh, wait, nope. I guess he found the rhubarb.

And now we’ll watch him pick out every little chopped piece.

You know what, considering the “circumstances,” 1 out of 2 ain’t so bad. And I like them too. And perhaps I learned some lessons:) And now I have enough rhubarb muffins to feed us for a week.

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Have a rhubarb recipe and some local rhubarb? Then join us, won’t you? If you haven’t already, go read a bit more about our From Dirt To Dinner project and then link on up!