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Recipe: cinnamon rhubarb mini loaves

Did you eat vegetables growing up? Did you like them? How about now that you’re (presumably) an adult? I love vegetables and I loved eating them as a kid. Vegetables in my youth were crunchy, bright green, delicious. My mom and grandmother are such brilliant cooks and they always made sure we ate fresh and healthy food. In contrast, it was rather puzzling to stand in the lunch line at school and wonder what the hell that puke green, tasteless mash was on the plate. It was broccoli – and no one was the wiser, but then again we were all like… seven years old.

We eat vegetables and fruits regularly here at urb. I take that for granted until we go on week-long backpacking trips or I have to fast before surgery or medical procedures and then I begin to crave fresh produce and salivate at the sight of… green grass on the side of the trail. I have yet to meet a vegetable or fruit I refuse to eat. Pushing the limits would be durian (I’ve tasted durian fruit paste – very interesting) and bitter melon (my mom makes a terrific bitter melon stir fry which I love, except for the bitter melon – but I eat it because my mom’s cooking rocks).

This may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve never cooked with rhubarb before, until last week. I just remember reading about something rhubarb being poisonous (it’s the leaves, not the stalks) and so I avoided it for many many years and left it to others to slay the red cousin of celery. I’ve tasted rhubarb and strawberry muffins and rhubarb and strawberry pie (my days in Ithaca) and it was always an exercise for me to figure out what the rhubarb tasted like because it was never separate from the strawberries. Kind of like couples who have to do everything together and you really want to hang out with the one but the other is always there? Yeah.