Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch

I confess.  I made this for breakfast.  It has to be healthier than any store-bought anything, so I figured why not.  Everyone ate it, no one got sick or died, and if we had a little too much sugar in our breakfast food that day, no one knows.  So there.

This is a Penzey's Spices recipe, from their magazine.  I can't find a link to the recipe on their website, so I'll simply credit them here.

One Note:  I have made this recipe two ways--with strawberries and rhubarb, and with just rhubarb.  Even though rhubarb is much tarter than strawberries, I adjusted nothing else in the recipe and it was still delicious.  That's just in case your strawberries haven't come in yet, or your strawberry plants are done producing for the season.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch
Yield:  10-12 servings

1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
3/4 cup oatmeal, uncooked
1/2 cup butter, melted
2/3 cup sugar
1 to 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 cups diced rhubarb
2 cups strawberries, sliced
1 cup water
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F.  In a roomy bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, oatmeal, butter, sugar and cinnamon and mix until crumbly.  Press half of the mixture into a greased 13x9 baking pan.  Cover with the rhubarb and strawberries.

In a small saucepan, heat the water, cornstarch and vanilla over medium-low heat until thick and clear, stirring often.  (It doesn't get totally clear, just somewhat translucent, so use thickness to determine when it's done.)  This step takes about five minutes.

Pour the water/cornstarch mixture over the rhubarb/strawberry layer.  It's more like spreading it, since it's pretty thick; I use a flat bowl scraper to do this.  Top with the remaining crumb mixture and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes.

A dish of pure yum.

Back to life,
Christine

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Early May -- Assessing My Gardens

May 4.

It has warmed up nicely here--not too warm, but warm enough for the dandelions to pop up everywhere (yeah, that's my back yard above...).  While Fernando started mowing the back yard...

I went to check on what plants have been growing in early spring--rhubarb, garlic, and strawberries.  I started with my rhubarb, because there were strange stalks I had never seen before growing out of the one large plant!

My rhubarb plant had actually flowered!  I cut them off at the stems so I could still harvest the rhubarb.  Yum!

I'm always late to the game when it comes to chives.  I always forget to use them in salads, burgers, and other dishes, and they end up budding and flowering by the time I finally remember.  See?

I just hack them down and wait for them to regrow.  Next I checked on the strawberries.  Amazing--there were blossoms everywhere!  I'm hoping for a huge strawberry harvest this year!

The front yard garden gets an assessment too, since I've got some herbs growing there.  I'm not much of a flower gardener; my philosophy is that if I can't kill it and it's halfway pretty, it gets planted in my flower gardens somewhere.

Here is my brick garden, as I call it, with flowers and herbs.  That huge bushy thing in the front is oregano, growing like a weed--which is good, in this case!

Another angle.

My English thyme (below, left side) also came in like gangbusters!  I love running my hands through the plant, then sniffing my hands.  I'm sure people walking and driving by wonder what I'm doing.  But I don't care.  Next to the thyme below is a green leafy lettuce-looking plant called French sorrel.  Yes, the English and French are coexisting nicely.  I found a recipe for sorrel soup which I can't wait to try.  Also, sorrel has a lemony flavor with a little tartness and it's really good chopped up in a raw garden salad or on top of fish.

English thyme.

My last stop is my front porch garden, with its little blue brunnera (Siberian bugloss) and the multi-colored coral bells (I think I have five varieties in there!).  The woodland hydrangea bush anchors this garden (that taller bush in the back), and there's also some astilbe still hidden there, along with a few hosta plants that keep coming back even though I've dug them up a few times.  Ha!

It's always nice to make a pre-planting trip around my gardens.  It gives me an idea of how things stand and what space will be available for this year's plants.  Now it's off to plan my veggie garden!


Back to life,
Christine

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What My Garden Looks Like in Late June

June 26.

Time to take a little walk through my veggie garden to see what's up!

First stop is my tomatoes, of course.  I have three sections dedicated to various varieties of this  luscious summer fruit!

Summer Peach and Paul Robeson varieties.

Better Boy tomatoes.

The purple onions growing in the middle section.

Cherokee Purple; what beautiful tomatoes these are going to be!

One whole bed of garlic!

The acorn squash seem to be doing well.

Rhubarb.

Parsley in the front, jalapeños behind.

Sweet green peppers in the front; sweet red behind.

 Melrose, sweet red peppers.

Five basil plants.

The Overview:

Everything looks green and yummy!  The strawberries (front bed, left in the image above) are fading after their harvest time, so I'll just keep watering occasionally and let them go.  I'm thankful that the Lord has provided a way for us to have fresh, beyond organic veggies throughout the summer, and--Lord willing--into the winter!


Back to life,
Christine

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Mid-May Garden Tour

May 15.

Exactly mid-May, and it was still cold in Chicagoland.  I would be waiting a few more days to plant.  I walked my mulched garden walkways and saw that some weeds had popped up, growing in the decaying mulch with the help of spring rains.  I thanked the Lord He had given me the opportunity to make those walkways!  There were just a few weeds here and there, and because I had laid down landscape fabric, the weeds' roots were very shallow.  Gentle pulling brought up the entire weed, and within five minutes my pathway weeding was done.  You can see the pile(s) of weeds in the photo below.

Now on to the tour!  A check of my strawberry plants revealed tons and tons of blossoms!  Future strawberries!  Last year we picked a small bowl (maybe a quart).  This year promised to be a bumper year!

My two rhubarb plants were doing fantastic, too.  I knew I'd be able to harvest some of that for making preserves!

Above, in front of the rhubarb, you can see purple onions popping up!  These sprung up from last year--I thought I had pulled all those onions, but apparently there were some still in the ground.  These would have to be transplanted to make room for what would eventually be planted here:  squash!

In the corner of my garlic bed, the chives had already budded and were getting ready to blossom.

Here and there, I spotted fungi.  This was on the side of one of the raised beds.

Finally, here's my garden overview.  Our pool may not be functional for much this year, but the pool deck is my vantage point of choice for photographing my garden overviews!

Back to life,
Christine

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