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Rhubarb — Tis the season (almost)

Rhubarb is one of the first food items to be harvested in the spring. If we can just get it to stop snowing and start melting, it shouldn’t take long to find evidence of rhubarb spears poking their way out of the dirt. You don’t even need a green thumb to get rhubarb to grow and one or two plants can produce a lot of rhubarb in a pretty short amount of time.

Rhubarb, by itself, is very low in calories. It contains some vitamin C — about 10 mg in a one cup serving. It also contains some folate, phosphorus and potassium. And it is SOUR! I used to have a patch that had two different varieties of rhubarb. One plant had smaller, red stalks and the other had stalks that were much bigger and more green. The smaller red version seemed to be slightly sweeter, but they could both make you pucker up if you tried eating it right out of the garden. And because of its sourness, we often find that most recipes using rhubarb also include lots of sugar.

It also seems that most of the recipes for making things with rhubarb tend to be desserts and treats. I’m not sure who came up with the idea of combining such a sour fruit into a dessert, but bars, pies, cakes and crisps seem to be where we are likely to see this sour fruit turn up.

However, you can sweeten up the taste of recipes that use rhubarb by including other sweet fruits (like strawberries, pears, apples or bananas) or fruit concentrates in place of all that sugar. Making a sauce out of rhubarb and other sweeter fruits can provide a flavorful topping for a (perhaps) lower in sugar and fat base, such as angel food cake or yogurt.

Here’s a simple recipe and method for making rhubarb sauce that is lower in sugar:

Rhubarb Sauce

4-5 large, sweet apples

3 long rhubarb stalks

1/2 pint strawberries

Sweetener to taste (optional)

1/4 cup water

Wash, peel, core and chop apples into pieces. Wash and chop rhubarb into pieces. Wash strawberries and pick off the stems. Put all the fruit in a heavy pot with ? cup water. Bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium low, put on a lid with the cover tilted slightly to allow the steam to escape. Simmer and stir occasionally. If you prefer a less chunky sauce, use a potato masher to mash the fruit a few times. Simmer until it is the “chunkiness” and thickness you prefer (approximately 1/4- 1/2 hour.) Remove from heat and add a sweetener, if desired. Cool.

This sauce could be served by itself as a side dish or as a simple dessert. If you are looking for a “fancier” dessert you could serve it in a trifle. Trifles are a cold dessert of sponge cake that is typically layered with fruit, custard, jelly, cream or other ingredients. We often see the layers in trifles consisting of high fat creams, gooey chocolates and other high sugar and high fat items. But there isn’t any reason that the layers couldn’t be healthier options.

You can layer any type of ingredients into a trifle. To make a trifle, just take a prepared angel food cake and cut it into chunks. Put a layer of the cake pieces into the bottom of the trifle bowl. Then add layers of fruit (such as fresh strawberries, bananas or peaches), the rhubarb sauce, low fat whipped topping, yogurt or pudding, granola or other ingredients between the layers of cake according to your preferences. There is no set recipe to make a trifle and it can be made as big or small as you want. In addition, if you have a clear glass trifle bowl, it is so pretty to see the layers and colors that it’s a treat for our eyes as well.

Cheryl Rude is a registered dietitian at Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center.

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