rhubarb

It's another sign of spring: rhubarb.  The reddish green stalks and oversized leaves are some of the season's first edible plants that appear around our house.

A few posts ago I raved about planting sugar maples--another leafy friend that produces in early spring.  I thought it would be fun to do a small comparison between rhubarb and sugar maples.  Here's what I've come up with:

1.  Time needed for plant/tree maturation.  Rhubarb: one year.  Sugar maple: half a century.  
2.  Ease of harvest for a child.  A three year old can snap off a rhubarb stalk and eat it in seconds.  Ask a toddler tap a sugar maple and turn the sap into syrup?  Maybe not.  
3.  Season length.  The maple sap flow is usually measured in days.  Alternatively, our rhubarb patch will still be producing in July.
4.  Ease of spelling for a child.  The silent 'h' can be a hangup even for adults.  Alternatively, 'sugar' and 'maple' are straightforward.

So, tonight we left the maple syrup in the fridge and put our rhubarb shoots to good use by making a rhubarb dessert.  The kids were invited to 'wash the dishes' or 'pick some rhubarb'.  They chose harvesting the tasty tart treats.  I got dish duty.  And we all ended up with a bowl of rhubarb crisp a la mode.