Rhubarb Ginger Relish
A compilation of various recipes I found, again on a quest to find something with as little sugar as possible. But, hey, it’s rhubarb – some sugar required!
Ingredients:
2 cups diced rhubarb
2 cups chopped onion
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
Preparation:
In a saucepan, combine all ingredients.
Bring to boil and continue to boil gently until mixture becomes thick, about 20-30 minutes.
Taste and adjust seasoning according to your preference.
Place in hot, sterilized jars. (see previous post)
Heat process your jars if saving for more than 3 months in the refrigerator. (see previous post)
Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce
Who would have thought! This one came from the Washington Post and I almost followed it exactly!
Ingredients:
2 tsp canola oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups rhubarb
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp water, plus more as needed to thin the sauce to your preferred consistency
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 tsp salt
Fresh ground black pepper, or cayenne pepper
Yield: 1 1/2 cups
Preparation:
Heat oil in a saucepan.
Cook onion in saucepan until soft and translucent -do not brown.
Add the rhubarb, brown sugar and water. Bring to boil and cook until rhubarb is soft, about 6 to 7 minutes.
Remove from the heat and let the mixture sit in the saucepan for 15 minutes.
Add mustard, vinegar, honey, ketchup, salt and pepper to taste, stirring to combine.
Transfer to a blender and puree, or use an immersion blender in the saucepan to puree until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasonings.
To serve, warm the sauce. For a thinner sauce, add water, apple juice, if desired, or the cooking juices from whatever main ingredient the sauce is being served with.
Enjoy!
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There’s just one problem, you’re not sure where, when, how and to whom to donate your fruit.
Problem solved. Here is a handy, dandy reference listing nine Winnipeg organizations that will accept fresh fruit and vegetable donations. Included in this document are all the logistical details you’ll need to know right from where to park to which door to enter.
Sharing the Harvest: When, Where and How to Donate Fruit – pdf
And, if you need help in getting to your chosen charity, check out this MapQuest map which shows all nine locations.
But don’t forget to consider some of the other groups and individuals that might exist in your neighbourhood. Perhaps there’s a seniors’ centre nearby, a garden club or a neighbourhood group that would welcome a fruit donation for a specific program or event.
These resources were developed as part of the Guide to Backyard Fruit funded by the Manitoba Alternative Food Research Alliance(MAFRA) and the Canadian Home Economics Foundation (CHEF). For future reference they will be listed in the top right corner of this website under “Guide to Backyard Fruit”.
Thanks for sharing!
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Preserving rhubarb for future use can be as easy or complicated as you want.
When I want easy, I simply wash it, cut it, let it air dry and then freeze it in freezer bags. It can be used for crisps, muffins, bars and most of the other rhubarb recipes listed on this blog. I have never had a problem using frozen rhubarb. While we usually use all of ours within 8-10 months, I believe it would last for at least a year.
As an alternative to freezing, I tried making rhubarb jam for the first time. I was hesitant to make “green” jam, so I opted for using the red and red/green rhubarb stalks for the jam. The green stalks will wait for another recipe.
Here are the two jams now gracing my pantry. Classic Rhubarb Jam and Rhubarb Pineapple Jam.
Classic Rhubarb Jam
Courtesy of a fellow Professional Home Economist who used to test recipes for Winnipeg Hydro.
4 cups diced rhubarb
3 cups sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
Yield: 3 cups or 3 x 250ml jam jars
Preparation:
In a large saucepan combine all ingredients. Let stand for 15 minutes to draw out some of the rhubarb juice.
Bring to boil. Boil for 13-15 minutes stirring frequently.
To test for the proper jam consistency, put a small plate in the fridge to get it really cold. When you’ve boiled your mixture for about 13 minutes take a teaspoonful and place it on the cold plate. Place it back in the fridge for just under a minute. Now tilt the plate and look at your “jam”. What does it look like? Is it runny or fairly stiff? If it’s too runny, boil the mixture some more and test again. Repeat this process until what you have on your plate looks the way you like your jam. This tried and true test simulates what your end product will look like, so what you get on the cold plate is what you’ll get in the jar!
Carefully place the jam in jars that have been sterilized according to the instructions below. Leave a 1/4 inch headspace.
Remove any air bubbles by sliding a spatula along the inside of the glass. Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean, damp cloth.
Place lid on top followed by the screw top lid. Tighten the screw top lid and then undo by a quarter turn.
Heat process your jam to give it a shelf life of 1 year. (There seems to be some debate (Bernardin vs Kraft) about whether or not to heat process jam. Bernardin says you should, Kraft says it’s not necessary.) I did, but for three jars of rhubarb jam that will probably be eaten within the next 3 months, I may not the next time around. If you choose to, here are the basic instructions.
Place jars in a large pot of water with a rack and a tight fitting lid. (If you don’t have a rack for your pot, make a temporary one using screw top lids from extra canning jars.) Cover the jars with 1 inch of water and allow room for a rolling boil. Bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, continue to boil for 10 minutes.
Remove jars from water and let rest on counter for 24 hours. You should hear the jars “pop”.
Check the seal after 24 hours of cooling. If the lid is curved down and remains like that when pressed, it is sealed.
Put on toast, waffles, pancakes or ice cream and enjoy!
Rhubarb Pineapple Jam
Ingredients:
3 cups diced rhubarb
1 can (19 oz /540ml) crushed pineapple
2 3/4 cups sugar
1 box Certo Light Pectin Crystals
Yield: 4 cups or 4 x 250ml jam jars
Preparation:
In a large saucepan combine rhubarb, pineapple (with juice).
Combine pectin with 1/4 cup of sugar. Add to rhubarb.
Bring to boil.
Add remaining sugar.
Boil until rhubarb softens, about 10 – 15 minutes. Stir frequently.
Carefully place the jam in jars that have been sterilized according to the instructions below. Leave a 1/4 inch headspace.
Remove any air bubbles by sliding a spatula along the inside of the glass. Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean, damp cloth.
Place lid on top followed by the screw top lid. Tighten the screw top lid and then undo by a quarter turn.
Heat process your jam to give it a shelf life of 1 year. Place jars in a large pot of water with a rack and a tight fitting lid. (If you don’t have a rack for your pot, make a temporary one using screw top lids from extra canning jars.) Cover the jars with 1 inch of water and allow room for a rolling boil. Bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, continue to boil for 10 minutes.
Remove jars from water and let rest on counter for 24 hours. You should hear the jars “pop”.
Check the seal after 24 hours of cooling. If the lid is curved down and remains like that when pressed, it is sealed.
Put on toast, waffles, pancakes or ice cream and enjoy!
Sterilizing Jam Jars, Lids and Equipment (from Kraft Canada)
You can pre-sterilize jars & lids by using one of two methods:
- Sterilize all jars, lids and filling equipment in a 225ºF oven for 10 minutes, then keep in the oven, with heat turned off, until needed so they stay warm.
- Sterilize all jars, lids and filling equipment in boiling water for 15 minutes and keep warm.
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At 4:50 pm today, we had our 100th volunteer sign up. That’s a 1000% increase in the number of volunteers from last year. Can you say WOW!
We also had our 51st fruit owner sign up.
That’s a lot of fruit that we’ll be rescuing this summer.
Thanks everyone for your interest and support.
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Rhubarb is colourful. There are numerous varieties of rhubarb ranging in colour from celery green to strawberry red. But take note, colour is not an indication of sweetness. Trust me, when I tasted these three varieties, they all tasted equally tart to me!
Rhubarb is tart. It does require some form of sweetener, which may leave you wondering, why bother? If you have to load it up with sugar, isn’t it better not to eat it at all?
If you’re a purist and you don’t consume jam, syrup, muffins, crisps, bars, or fruit beverages then yes, you probably would find rhubarb of limited use. However, while our family is trying to cut back on sugar, we still eat those foods, and when we do, I want our choices to be good ones. As much as possible, we prefer food that’s home grown, local and homemade so that we control the ingredients. Why not take advantage of the fact that rhubarb is local, cheap, and a source of fibre, vitamin C, Vitamin K and calcium.
Which would you prefer for your family?
- toast with store bought fruit jam or homemade rhubarb jam
- pancakes with syrup or stewed rhubarb
- muffins with store bought frozen cranberries or local rhubarb
- koolaid or rhubarb slush
And, of course all things in moderation. I’m more likely to give my kids water or milk with their meal than rhubarb slush, but on those special occasions I would much rather serve a glass of rhubarb slush than koolaid or pop.
Why not give rhubarb another chance? Try some of Fruit Share’s favourite rhubarb recipes.
]]>Winnipeg Harvest
Winnipeg Harvest is a non-profit, community-based organization. They are committed to providing food to people who struggle to feed themselves and their families. They are also committed to maximizing public awareness of hunger while working towards long-term solutions to hunger and poverty.
Winnipeg Harvest uses donated fruit to prepare meals, fill food hampers and share with other organizations.
Contact Information
Street Address: 1085 Winnipeg Avenue
Phone: 204-982-3663
Website: www.winnipegharvest.org
Donations Accepted
Fruit
Apples, apricots, berries, crab apples, grapes, rhubarb, sour cherries, plums
Other Food Items
frozen fruit (labeled & dated), garden vegetables, commercial canned, frozen and dry goods. For a list of top food items currently needed visit the list of most wanted items at Winnipeg Harvest.
Non-Food Items
none
Donation Logistics
When
Monday to Saturday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Where
– Front door of 1085 Winnipeg Avenue for donations under 30 pounds
- Loading dock at back of 1085 Winnipeg Avenue for large donations
Special Notes
Please phone 982-3663 to indicate the type and quantity of fruit you have to ensure someone will be able to assist you with unloading.
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This week we had our first rhubarb harvests. Check out the tally on the side to see how much we’ve collected and where we’re donating it.
Thanks to all our fruit owners for giving us access to their rhubarb and thanks to the volunteers who are picking and sharing it.
Now, to enjoy that rhubarb here are some great recipes submitted by our volunteers and fans in 2010!
The following are some recipes that were submitted to our blog in 2010. Just click on the link to get the full recipe.
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Click here for full visual - Fruit Share Coordinator Ad
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Novel idea bears fruit
Riverview woman’s food sharing plan helps build community
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BY BOB ARMSTRONG
Winnipeg Health Region
Wave Magazine, May / June 2011
A carpet of rotting apples beneath a fruit tree is more than just an unsightly magnet for wasps to Getty Stewart.
It’s a waste of food and a lost opportunity to bring neighbours and communities together.
That feeling is what prompted the Riverview mother, home economist, activist and blogger to launch Fruit Share, a volunteer program that connects people who own fruit trees with volunteer pickers and social agencies.
Her work with Fruit Share, combined with her popular gardening blog and the initiatives she’s spearheaded as president of the Manitoba Association of Home Economists, earned her a Healthy Living Award at a ceremony in April sponsored by the Reh-Fit Centre Foundation.
Living in the Riverview area, where many homes have apple trees, she knew that a lot of delicious fruit goes to waste every year because owners of trees don’t have the ability, time or energy to pick their apples, or don’t know what to do with the fruit. When she read of a program in Edmonton called Operation Fruit Rescue that connects pickers with unused fruit, she wondered if it would work in Winnipeg. After connecting with the South Osborne Urban Community Co-op, she decided to give it a try last May.
The results in the first year were beyond her expectations. She and her 10 volunteers picked nearly 1,700 pounds of apples, as well as rhubarb and Evans cherries (a large, sweet, bright-red kind of sour cherry). She stresses that the apples were in most cases full size and sweet, noting “We didn’t pick any crab apples at all.”
The program is all about sharing nature’s bounty. Owners of the trees and the volunteer pickers each receive one third of the fruit. The other third is shared with social agencies, including the nearby Fred Tipping Place seniors’ housing complex. Agape Table, Siloam Mission and other agencies also reaped sweet rewards.
Last year, the program focused just on the Riverview/Osborne area. This year, with approximately 40 volunteers already signed up by late April, Stewart is expanding Fruit Share to Wolseley, West Broadway, St. Vital, Daniel McIntyre, St. Mathews, Spence and North End neighbourhoods, where the program will partner with local community development organizations.
She hopes to harvest 7,000 pounds of fruit this year.
Stewart sees sharing food as a unique way to build community. She recalls how a trip last year to drop off apples at Siloam Mission was a profound experience for her whole family and relishes the connections she made with residents at Fred Tipping Place. “They started recognizing me as The Fruit Lady.”
Using the fruit that would otherwise go to waste is also a way of rediscovering knowledge about the environment and food that many of us have lost. She notes that many people with cherry trees in their yard aren’t even aware that the fruit is edible. “It takes me back to when we used to go to the Souris Riverbend and pick chokecherries,” she says, recalling her childhood on a farm family in the Wawanesa area.
Her formative experiences as a farm girl are also part of what prompted her to create her Manitoba Veggie Delight blog about gardening.
“I wanted to get the kids to experience gardening and have that appreciation of where food comes from,” she says. “That’s the farm girl in me. I just love to have dirt under my fingers.”
After gardening a community plot near Churchill Drive for the last four or five years, last year she began blogging about what she was planting, what weeds she was pulling, what insects were nibbling at her veggies and how the harvest was coming.
“It’s a mix of techniques, tips and advice,” she says. “As I was blogging, all the things that I learned as a kid on the farm came back to me. I remembered all the things that my parents taught me about gardening and I was thinking, ‘What will my kids learn from this?’”
And it’s not just her kids, Aidan, 10, and Melanie, 7. Last year the blog had hits from about 300 people per month.
That combination of new technology and old-school appreciation of growing food is carrying over into another project: a booklet on harvesting backyard fruits and berries. Stewart has received funding from the Manitoba Alternative Food Research Alliance and the Canadian Home Economist Foundation to prepare a booklet to show people how to identify what kinds of fruits or berries they have in their yard and give them ideas of what to do with them.
The booklet will include recipes, tips on preserving fruit, information on how to get help with harvesting and details on how to share the backyard bounty with social agencies. The last point is a significant one, she says, because not all agencies accept preserves or baked goods (though some do) and there may be a specific time and place to take donations.
The booklet will be posted on the Fruit Share website, as well as be available through Fruit Share’s partner organizations.
While Fruit Share and the gardening blog are focused on growing food, Stewart also is involved in a program that sells locally grown food.
As president of the Manitoba Association of Home Economists, she has helped to develop the Farm to School Healthy Choice Fundraiser, in partnership with Peak of the Market and the Manitoba government.
The idea is simple. Instead of selling chocolate bars to raise money for school programs – an awkward fit with the effort by schools to promote healthy eating – participating schools sell bags of Manitoba-grown vegetables from Peak of the Market. Peak of the Market, the Manitoba vegetable marketing company owned by producers, sells the veggies to the schools at cost and provides free delivery to the school.
Last year the program was piloted in 66 schools in urban, rural and northern Manitoba. Feedback was so positive that this year it’s spreading to every school in the province. And many of those schools have incorproated the veggies into lessons on food and nutrition.
During her time as president, Stewart has also worked to raise the profile of home economists – and spread the news about healthy family activities – through a monthly Home and Family segment on Breakfast Television.
Getty’s emphasis on a healthy balance between work, family, and community is something she shares with her husband, Darryl, who runs a business called Ibex Payroll that the couple founded before they had children.
At one time, she found herself juggling motherhood with work at Ibex and her own work in a public speaking business she operated for 12 years.
“It was hectic and rushed and I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’”
She’s still involved with the company – she’s listed as “Head of the Home Range,” one of many quirky job titles that staff at Ibex have on their business cards – but focuses more of her energies on family and community. And she still makes sure to set aside volunteer work for healthy activity, whether taking in a fitness boot camp at the Riverview Community Centre or leading hikes as camp naturalist this summer at Camp Wasaga near Riding Mountain National Park.
It’s all part of her belief that healthy living is found in a balance of social, physical, and emotional well-being – and that healthy living requires getting involved to make it happen.
“We’ve got to create the kind of world we want for ourselves,” she says.
Bob Armstrong is a Winnipeg writer.
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