Last month, my neighbor Monica had an idea. This isn't uncommon - she has lots of ideas, and most of them are great, and involve some way to make the neighborhood feel more like a community. She has organized our Garden Farms Farmers' Market, book exchanges, fundraisers, the neighborhood newsletter and directory, Christmas caroling, a parade, and that's not even half the stuff I can think of. So, I wasn't at all surprised when she had the following idea of a way to encourage and support our neighbor Sue, who is undergoing a round of chemo for cancer: "since Sue loves rhubarb, I would love to recruit some neighbors to make a rhubarb dessert (pie, cobbler, bars, whatever) for her maybe once every week or so for May and June". This was my week and I decided to make a cobbler (because it seemed easier than pie, and I think I have mentioned before that I am rather lazy). First, I went down to Monica's and we picked the rhubarb - yes, picked it. My first time - and might I mention that one of Monica's rhubarb plants is over 40 years old and is still going strong. We sliced it off at the stalk with a knife, then removed the leaf (poisonous; you can't even feed it to goats, so you know it's bad!). Then I brought it home and chopped it up and looked up a recipe for rhubarb cobbler (I used the one from thepioneerwoman.com because I like her other recipes). Then I cooked the rhubarb until it was soft. Then I panicked, because this variety of rhubarb is green, and I thought that a green cobbler would look really weird, so I threw in some blueberries I had, and added a couple of drops of red food coloring (I tell you, that helped
so much!!). Bonus - I had enough of the fruit to make a small second cobbler for us for dessert tonight (there it is in the picture, along with the gorgeous peonies I got on Sunday for my anniversary).
Eating this wonderful cobbler, with vanilla ice cream, was not the best part of the day, however. The best part was when I took the cobbler down to Sue's house and she came to the door, bald, wearing a dress, and hugged me three times in about two minutes, and showed the cobbler to her whole family, and thanked me over and over. Seriously, I would like to propose that one way to feel better, if you are sad, anxious, or upset, is to do something for someone else. It doesn't even have to be a big thing, and it can be done anonymously, too. But truly, doing something as simple and easy as making a dessert has made my day (or two, or week)! And of course, I am reminded
once again what a blessing it is to live here in my amazing and wonderful neighborhood.
