Idle Thoughts on an Almost Summer Afternoon on the Kitchen Porch

Rhubarb:

Don’t pick your rhubarb, the old-timers say, after Fourtha July. That’s so the plants can continue to grow and store up energy to last through the winter, albeit underground, and come back again to greet us next spring. When I was a kid, we used to steal rhubarb from a neighbor’s plot and suck on the intensely sour stalks with great pleasure, just as we got great pleasure from gnawing on green apples in July. “You’ll get a belly ache,” our mothers said, but we didn’t care. It was worth a belly ache for that incredibly tart, crisp, forbidden fruit.

Nowadays, the very thought of sinking my teeth into a stalk of sour rhubarb gives me the chills. But combine that rhubarb with some sugar, a little maple syrup, a few spices (cardamom, oddly enough, goes very well with rhubarb), and the grated zest and juice of an orange—well, that’s something worth tasting. I did that the other day to make a rhubarb compote, and now I’m going to combine it with the first of the season’s strawberries,

top it off with a rich, buttery, buttermilk dough and bake it all together for a splendid cobbler.