Weekend Plans Post: The Week From Heck (and Rhubarb Sauce)

Okay. So I was given a task at work with an indeterminate due date. “When will you need this by?”, I asked. “The end of the month?”, I was told. I nodded. “No problem.”

So, of course, on the 20th, I was asked if I would have it done soon. “When do you need this by?”, I asked. “Wednesday? Lunch?”

So I worked a 12 on Tuesday and a 10 on Wednesday and got it to him by Thursday lunch. Which meant that, by that point, if I only worked another 5 hours, I could have Friday off! And then stuff didn’t work and there was a problem that I didn’t successfully troubleshoot until about 20 minutes before the whistle blew and so, technically, I finished everything I could reasonably finish and handed in a big project a day late by their lights, a week early by mine… and finished up the week with another 3 day weekend.

Victory, I guess. If I have many more weeks this victorious, I’ll need a vacation.

That said, there was a small unqualified victory: Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce made in the slow cooker (and the recipe is from that Better Homes & Gardens slow cooker cookbook I like).

Here’s the recipe:

6 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces (about 2 pounds), or two 16-ounce packages frozen unsweetened sliced rhubarb
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup white grape juice or apple juice
1/2 teaspoon finely shredded orange peel
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3 inches stick cinnamon
2 cups fresh strawberries halved

1. In a 3 1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker, place rhubarb. Stir in sugar, grape or apple juice, orange peel, ginger, and cinnamon stick.
2. Cover. Cook on low heat for 5 1/2 to 6 hours or on high heat for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.
3. Remove stick cinnamon. If using low heat setting, turn to high heat setting. Stir in strawberries. Cover and cook 15 minutes longer.

That’s not how we did it.

For one thing, just because the app says “yeah, we’ve got fresh and frozen rhubarb”, it doesn’t mean that the store has fresh *OR* frozen rhubarb. Whole Foods didn’t have rhubarb, Safeway didn’t have rhubarb, and it was only the *PIE FILLING* aisle of King Soopers that had canned rhubarb.

So we used a couple of these:

Now, I still added the 1/2 cup of white grape juice to the mix and I shouldn’t have. The canned stuff came with strawberry sauce and so my finished product was a bit more soupy and less syrupy than we wanted.

But it was otherwise excellent. Good on ice cream, good in a bowl of plain yogurt in the morning, good in a bowl of otherwise plain oatmeal. This is an excellent dessert sauce.

Even if you can’t even dream about getting fresh rhubarb in February. Like it’s Michigan in the 1970s or something.

So maybe that’ll help.

This weekend will be devoted to finishing off the rhubarb and maybe making spaghetti sauce. Monday will be here far too soon.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “Rumble”. Photo taken by Maribou.)