...on tulips and rhubarb

My Polaroid Blog

We bought plants last weekend for the first time ever, because there is a back porch that gets lots of sun. As it gets warmer, we'll buy even more, so our porch will look like a greenhouse.
But I'm nervous, because I tend to kill things.
I'm especially nervous because I don't want one of those "things" to be my cat, so we printed out a long list of plants toxic to cats, but it's extremely long and I find most of them unidentifiable because they are in Latin. Damn you, binomial nomenclature!
The other night, my friend Brooke told me tulips are bad. Nooooo! I love tulips and fantasized about buying bunches and placing them in old wine bottles all around the house. Oh well, I'll have to do some more flower research.
Incidentally, the night our friends Brooke and Rich came over, I made a kick-ass rhubarb crisp, if I may say so myself. While this pretty red celery-looking fruit/veggie is in season, I'm going to make it in a whole bunch of different ways. I love rhubarb.
I was too tipsy to take out my camera that night, but honestly, it looked exactly like this:

Lara Robby

I stole from a bunch of different recipes and put it together based on what I had on hand. I used strawberries for that tart-sweet combination, but if you love that tart flavor, you can skip the berries.

• 2 lbs rhubarb, cut into 1 inch pieces
• a pint of strawberries (or more, or less, or none...it doesn't really matter)
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or orange extract or Grand Marnier Liquor (all these are optional; I used vanilla)
• 1 stick salted butter (if using unsalted, add a 1/2 tsp salt to the recipe)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a baking dish. Mix rhubarb, strawberries, cinnamon, vanilla, 1/3 cup of the flour and granulated sugar (I used sugar in the raw) in the dish.
Combine remaining flour, brown sugar, butter (cut in pieces) and salt (if using) and mix together with your hands until it forms a crumbly mixture.
Sprinkle over rhubarb-strawberry mixture and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until it starts bubbling and turns golden brown. I served it with vanilla bean ice cream. Yum.

Have a good weekend! I have a dress fitting (yikes) and a baby shower for one of my best friends. (yay!)
Don't forget to enter my Domino Book giveaway!