Lancaster, let's cook!

 I love rhubarb. When I was a kid my grandmother insisted that everyone eat it every spring. Photo by kaori nohara on Unsplash The old wives' tale she clung to held that rhubarb thinned your blood and thin blood made it easier to get through the heat of summer. I know that was a commonly held rationale for eating rhubarb for women of her generation.  What's far more likely is that in the northeast, it's one of the first fresh vegetables available. Rhubarb is one of those things that people either love or hate, so attaching a health benefit to eating it was a way to market it to the unenthusiastic. Some things never change. Anyhow, the rhubarb I used to eat at her behest was always rhubarb stewed with a lot of sugar, and we always ate it like that --as a side dish with supper. For reasons I'll never understand, it was never used as a dessert in my childhood home. Boy oh boy were we missing out. The same oxalic acid that gives cooked rhubarb its zing also makes it poison