One of the garden staples that I never mention is the lone rhubarb plant that Joel brought with him from New Ulm. Amazing that it went from the wet, humid Midwest to the dry Southwest and survived. There are actually two plants but multiple attempts to kill the second one have not worked. It produces maybe 3 pencil-like stalks a year. Every year I just pile more mulch on top of it and it pops right back through. The biggest plant got hammered during a hail storm early this spring but just kept on growing, enough to harvest about 4 cups of chopped rhubarb.

I never really do much with the rhubarb except let Joel pick it and freeze it and then when it is time to harvest the following year’s crop, I sneak into the freezer and throw the prior year’s bag out. There just isn’t enough off of one plant for me to spend much time messing around … except this year. We were invited to a neighbor’s for dinner and they asked me to bring a dessert.

Allow me to introduce our first batch of Rhubarb Crumble Ice Cream with Roasted Rhubarb and Crumble Topping … YUM!