Rhubarb Sauce

Warm rhubarb sundae

Stir it into oatmeal, spoon it warm over vanilla ice creams for a delicious sundae,  put it on your holiday table in place of cranberry sauce, or just spread it on toast.  Rhubarb sauce zings with tart flavor and bright color.

My friends Christopher and Barbara have a big garden.  Last spring they filled their freezer with rhubarb.  When I went to visit them in early November, they were busy harvesting the last of their garden crops for the season and needed to make room in their freezer, so they sent me home with a metric buttload of frozen rhubarb. If you have your own rhubarb plant, great, but if not, don't give up hope.  If you have access to a friend with a rhubarb plant, they can almost never eat all of their rhubarb, so you might be doing them a favor by offering to take some off their hands.

I am such a good friend.

The sauce is super easy to make.  Just put about 2 cups of rhubarb into a sauce pan with a splash (about 1/4 cup) of orange juice, a generous shake of cinnamon, and sweeten to taste with brown sugar.  Let it cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it is smooth and the consistency of apple sauce.

Sometimes, the sauce looks a little brown and not so attractive, so you can make it festive by grating in a couple of tablespoons of fresh beet.  This is totally optional and doesn't change the flavor at all.

Beet adds color.

I'm planning on putting this on my holiday table as a surprise alternative to cranberry sauce.  Your guests will be amazed at how delicious this simple sauce is.

Nourishing an Occupation 5: Pumpkin Bread Pudding

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Occupy Poughkeepsie Encampment 11/3/11

This week, I only cooked for Occupy Poughkeepsie one time, because other people in our 'Moms & Dad's' group shared cooking duties and covered other nights. This week, I prepared and served a vegan split pea soup that I wrote about in an earlier blog post and a pumpkin bread pudding that turned out so delicious and smelled so good that it seemed to disappear almost as soon as it appeared.

I decided to make a bread pudding because there was a large quantity of donated bread at the encampment and I wanted to make something that would use it up before it spoiled. Since the bread already wasn't vegan and I didn't know how to make a vegan bread pudding (though I'm sure it can be done), I made this dish vegetarian, but it does contain egg and dairy.

I started by taking 2 loaves of bread, one white and one wheat and tearing them into rough pieces into a large baking dish. I scattered a handful of raisins over the bread and fluffed and mixed everything together with my hands.

A few weeks ago, I roasted a large 'Long Island Cheese' variety pumpkin in the oven, scooped out the flesh and mashed it. This I froze in containers for future uses like this dish. In a large mixing bowl, I put 4 cups of pureed pumpkin. I added 8 small eggs. I get my eggs from a farmers market and this particular batch of eggs were small. If you have regular large eggs, I'd say use 6. I added 1/3 cup dark brown sugar, 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp nutmeg, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt and about 1.5 cups of half and half and beat this together until smooth.

I poured the pumpkin/egg mixture over the bread and gently mixed it in until every piece of bread was sopping in pumpkin goodness.

The whole pan went into the oven at 375F. I wasn't sure how long to cook it, so I checked on it every so often. After about an hour, I judged it was done because a knife inserted into the center came out clean. The smell was beyond heavenly.

After removing it from the oven, I covered the top with aluminum foil, wrapped the whole dish in a blanket, and drove it directly to Occupy Poughkeepsie in Hulme Park. When I arrived at the park, I opened the hatch of my car and the aroma immediately attracted a trio of Occupiers to help carry the food down to the camp. It was a cold night and even though the soup was also popular, most people there, including me, ate dessert first - and who can blame us?