There’s a field down the street from where I live.  It’s been there as long as I can remember and in this day and age, where suburban sprawl pushes deeper and deeper into the outskirts - until there’s no city center at all, but just one suburban town butting into another and another - finding a field like this has become a rare thing, indeed. 

A few years back, before the omnipresent talk of recessions and housing bubbles and job creation, it was going to be another housing development.  The pumpkin patch would go –leveled and paved – and in its place, another set of houses squeezed as closely together as possible: cookie-cutter facades masking builder’s grade cabinetry and mirror-image floor plans.  But instead, in the epic downturn of the economy, something good came out of it all. 

The building stopped. The pumpkin patch remained and the fields were not built over.  The grasses grew back and then the bushes and h flowers. 

Now it’s a strawberry field.  It’s owned by an Asian family and on certain days during the summer, you can see them hunched over, harvesting the fields, nothing but their straw hats -nón lá – bobbing up and down.
 
And these strawberries warmed in the sun:  sweet and soft, with just a twinge of tartness behind a round, sweet flavor are so delicious, you find that you just can’t look at a normal, frankenberry the same way again. They’re lovely and delicious and, even for a girl who’ll take a big ol’ slice of cake for dessert any day, they’d be perfect for dessert just by themselves.

Dear bad day,

I despise you.  Loathe you.  Don’t like anything about you.  Today I wanted happiness.  Today I had good hair – wasted on angry words, judgment and meanness.  Today felt just fine until the ugly crept in, insidious and sneaking, setting up camp right in my gut where it’s feeding on my insides. 

I’m exhausted from the gnawing coming inside out.  Tired from all the battling this day has seen.  The fatigue has crept in and now the only remedy for the slinking ugliness is rest. Perhaps sleep will drown out the voices of the day; dimming sadness, causing it to fade away.  Maybe the darkness of rest will bring lightness to tomorrow. 

And just like that, I banish you from my existence.  You are gone.

 You have no power here.   

Tomorrow you will be a distant memory,


Me

After many hours toiling on the Internet (ok, maybe just a two-minute Google search) the final verdict on the rhubarab issue is:

Vegetable.

BUT... it's not really so simple, friends.  The botanical...etymology, if you will, is slightly more complex:

Et voilà.  Capitalism prevails.  Fruit it is.

I find rhubarb mysterious. 

Yes, rhubarb. 

It probably goes right up there with the existence of the universe and the meaning of life and why my refrigerator freezes my lettuce only when I feel like having a salad and there’s nothing else in the fridge.

You see, we don’t get a lot of rhubarb in our neck of the woods.  Rhubarb is more of a cool weather plant and well,
frequent hundred degree weather around here wouldn’t exactly be described as cool. 

I mean, you know it’s hot when you find yourself having in-depth conversations with your girlfriends about the best underwear fabric for the weather (high performance wicking vs. cotton).  And these discussions turn into heated debates.  But I digress…

It’s hot and I find rhubarb mysterious.  

Rhubarb mystifies me because it’s a fruit.
 
It is a fruit, right?

I mean, it goes in pies, apparently (though I’ve never had a strawberry rhubarb pie that I can recall), but it looks so…stalky.

Is rhubarb a tree?

It looks tree-like. 

You have to cut it up into chunks, but then it cooks down.  

It’s red and it’s kind of green, too.  

And seriously, the stalk thing.  I don’t think I get it. 

But it’s strange, rhubarb’s just been…around.  All of a sudden, there it is in the stores, all  rhubarb-y, defying the heat. 

So I made rhubarb cake. A summer rhubarb cake.
 
And you know what?  It was pretty good.

A little bit tart, the cake and crumb set off the rhubarb in a way that made it a perfect, summer cake. 

 It was delicious.  Mysteriously delicious.

Mysterious Rhubarb Summer Cake (from Smitten Kitchen)
Cake
1 1/4 pound (565 grams) rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch lenghths on the diagonal
1 1/3 cup (265 grams) granulated sugar, divided
1 tablespoon lemon juice (psst, skip ahead and zest it for the cake before you cut it)
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces or 115 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 large eggs
1 1/3 cups (165 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/3 cup (80 grams) sour cream

Crumb
1 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (50 grams) light brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick, 2 ounces, or 55 grams) unsalted butter, melted

Make the cake: Preheat your oven to 350°F. Coat the bottom and sides of a 8x11-inch baking pan with butter or a nonstick cooking spray, then line the bottom with parchment paper, extending the lengths up two sides. (It will look like a sling). Stir together rhubarb, lemon juice and 2/3 cup sugar and set aside. Beat butter, remaining sugar and lemon zest with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at at time, scraping down the sides after each addition. Whisk together flour, baking powder, 3/4 teaspoon table salt and ground ginger together in a small bowl. Add one-third of this mixture to the batter, mixing until just combined. Continue, adding half the sour cream, the second third of the flour mixture, the remaining sour cream, and then the remaining flour mixture, mixing between each addition until just combined. 

Dollop batter over prepared pan, then use a spatula — offset, if you have one, makes this easiest — to spread the cake into an even, thin layer. Pour the rhubarb mixture over the cake, spreading it into an even layer (most pieces should fit in a tight, single layer). 

Stir together the crumb mixture, first whisking the flour, brown sugar, table salt and cinnamon together, then stirring in the melted butter with a spoon or fork. Scatter evenly over rhubarb layer. Bake cake in preheated oven for 50 to 60 minutes. The cake is done when a tester comes out free of the wet cake batter below. It will be golden on top. Cool completely in the pan on a rack.

Cut the two exposed sides of the cake free of the pan, if needed, then use the parchment “sling” to remove the cake from the pan. Cut into 2-inch squares and go ahead and eat the first one standing up. (If it’s written into the recipe, it’s not “sneaking” a piece but, in fact, following orders, right?) Share the rest with friends. Cake keeps at room temperature for a few days, but I didn’t mind it at all from the fridge, where I kept it covered tightly.