Rhubarb

 Rhubarb Ru'boaba 

  It is still rhubarb (ru-boaba) season in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Manitoba -- and it seems to be a bumper crop.

2 1/2 gallons of raw chopped rhubarb makes 20 2-cup packages

   My friend Steve Dahl returned from Wisconsin with three paper grocery bags filled with rhubarb and so we had a chopping party and decided to split our harvest into three products -- two gallons of chopped rhubarb were dry frozen (without preservatives, liquid or syrup) in 2-cup amounts for use in pies, cakes, muffins, breads, ice-cream and other delicacies.  

    Dry-frozen rhubarb should be frozen in zip-lock baggies or in freezer bags.  The goal is to remove as much oxygen as possible to prevent discolouration.  

    Dry-frozen rhubarb may be kept for up to six months... longer than that and one might want to consider freezing the rhubarb in a protective mixture of fruit juice or fruit syrup.  Dry-frozen rhubarb may freezer-burn but should be ok as long as it is used within the six-month period.

    Note that I heartily and unofficially endorse the Cuisinart line of chef knives available at Macy's and at Lowe's as being one of the best, most comfortable and edge-retaining chef knives for the money.  One might spend more, but I have found that Cuisinart are easily cleaned, require minimal maintenance and sharpening, and easily fit the hand.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Dump Cake 

4 to 5 cups of cubed rhubarb (raw) (two frozen packages)1 cup sugar 
1 (3 oz) package of strawberry Jello 
1 white cake mix 
1 1/4 cup water 
1/2 cup melted margarine or butter

    Put ingredients in a buttered 9 x 12 x 2-inch pan in even layers in the order that they are given - do not mix. Bake in a 350° oven for about 1 hour. 
    Delicious served warm with ice-cream, half-and-half or cream.

Rhubarb Sauce uses about 1/2 the sugar of a true jam.

    BUT our hearts were truly set on other things. 

Jams require twice the sugar as a preservative.

      Being Mennonite, one can hardly go through the summer without rodercoca and rhubarb sauce or rhubarb sauce on bread, cake or ice-cream.  So... we pulled out my Great-grandmother Mercedes Knuth - Conatser's recipe for rhubarb sauce (recalling Gladys Kauffman's secret of adding just a few raspberries for color and a more fruity taste).

    We will make 1 gallon of rhubarb sauce and 2 gallons of rhubarb - berry jam, adapting a recipe Nancy Wall collected from an old issue of Country Woman Journal.  

    In the city, Aldi's tends to have the best prices on produce... so we will scout the Asian markets for berries and probably purchase from Aldi's a mixture of blueberries and strawberries to add to the jam mixture.

    Before hand, we have packed both rhubarb mixtures in appropriate amounts of sugar to help break down the juices.  Jams take about twice the amount of sugar as does a sauce.  Sauces require sugar as a sweetener, while jellies and jams require enough sugar to act as a preservative.

    Caution:  like other fruits, rhubarb will darken if left out in the air, so we placed a layer of plastic wrap directly over the sugar-fruit mixtures with an additional covering to stop air flow.

    But, we will have to keep you in suspense until tomorrow to see how this all turns out.  Happy Rhubarb Season!

Tribal and Mennonite Quilt Diplomacy

ne je’stekjde Dakj

     Mennonites and Amish have long been known for their excellent quilting skills.  In the North American West, they have found themselves to be in good company – especially on the Fort Peck Reservation, home also to several Mennonite communities and nearby Hutterite Colonies.

    I have been in a special position to appreciate this as the grandson of the perpetual head of the EMB Ladies’ AID quilt committee and the son of a mother who herself learned to quilt from Native American quilters at the school in which she taught.  I deeply treasure both my Schmekfest Quilt and my two star quilts – one made by my mother and one given to me upon graduation by her best friend. 

Silence

    Old newsletters  often seem a nuisance – cluttering up countertops, junk drawers and email accounts – yet every so often, one stands out – finding a new life of inspiration taped to the refrigerator, computer desk or tucked gently inside the cover of one’s Bible.  Helen Wells Quintela’s Only in Silence the Word from the summer of 1997, is one such piece.

    Helen reminds us of the place of silence and of words in God’s creation, God’s presence and the spiritual union of the gemeinde – the church and community – “Out of the silent formless void, God spoke, ‘Let there be,’ and there was.  The moment of creation, the profound response of void to Creator is rooted in the Word.”

Forgetting the Dead

en Denkjemol

    As Mennonites, we seem to have a complicated relationship to the dead.  Officially, we, as Brüderthaler, seem to have a belief against honoring the dead.    Interestingly, my grandmother reiterated this when I questioned whether or not she wanted to view Grandfather’s grave in the country churchyard.  “No,” she replied, “he is not there – that does nothing to remind me of him.”

    This is despite the fact that she often joins her non-Mennonite family in recognizing their duty to decorate and clean the graves of her non-Mennonite family located in the city cemetery an hour away. 

    Half-Swedish, I also belong to a Scandinavian culture that has often historically blurred the lines separating the living from the dead -- the paradoxical personal resolution of the opposing cultural beliefs that I have had no problem resolving in favor of the Swedes. 

    The theory behind the Brüderthaler tradition is that in the graveyard, we have merely buried a husk and that the essence of the person is now in Heaven with the Heavenly Father.  If we want to speak to them or miss them, the appropriate response is to not waste one’s time in an empty graveyard, but instead to live a Holy life so that we too might join them in paradise.  The bodies are of no account, merely resting in storage, carefully arranged so that they will raise facing Jerusalem (east) when they are called for at the end times Resurrection.