My computer is giving me fits. It’s been giving me fits for several weeks now, but yesterday it threw a gigantic hissy fit and now it no longer allows me to upload pictures or save any word documents.

All I have left (besides my family, house, and photo albums) is the internet, for which I am truly grateful. I can email and post, research and read to my heart’s content, but I can’t post any new photos that I take. That means no new recipes.

But no matter. I have lots of old recipes that I’ve photographed and have been meaning to tell you about. We’ll work on those for now, okay? The new computer that we ordered last night should be here in a couple weeks. In the meantime, I’ve got some roasted rhubarb for you.

I’ve made roasted/stewed rhubarb before, but I didn’t really like it all that much. I’m not a cooked fruit sort of gal. Fruit cooked in a pastry, yes. Fresh, yes. But just the hot saucy fruit? Not so much.

This recipe changed that, at least in relation to rhubarb. I made it twice, in quick succession, and then I ate so much of it that I got sores in my mouth. At which point I went cold turkey. My mouth has now healed and I’m ready to dig in with my spoon again. But this time I’ll be a little more moderate.

The recipe couldn’t be easier: a couple pounds of rhubarb, a half-cup of white wine and the same of sugar, and a vanilla bean, split in half. I found it to be an excessive quantity of vanilla (not because it didn’t taste good, but because vanilla beans are so darn expensive), so I recommend using half a bean. Even that will provide you with plenty of vanilla flavoring and lots of dainty black specks throughout. (Whatever you do, do not throw out that vanilla bean when you’re done with it. Rinse it off, dry it well, and then grind it up in your food processor with some sugar to make vanilla-flecked sugar. Or simply stick it in a canister of sugar and let it do its magic, no loud motors involved.)

The second time I made this recipe, I served it with skillet cornbread and vanilla ice cream. The paring was delicious, if I do say so myself. And I do. Nubbly, buttery, slightly-sweet cornbread, tangy-tart rhubarb, and creamy-cool ice cream, oh my!

I used this cornbread recipe, but I baked it in an eight-inch cast iron skillet which improved the texture considerably. Simply preheat the skillet in the oven, add a tablespoon of butter and swish it around, making sure to coat the sides. Add the batter and return the skillet to the oven to bake for 20-30 minutes (or longer, if you forget to turn the oven back on after removing an earlier batch of baking). It’s a 100-percent whole grain recipe (my mother’s jaw about hit the floor when I told her there was no white flour in it), what with the cup of cornmeal and a cup of whole wheat pastry flour, both freshly ground.

Do I sound annoyingly holy? I’m not. I’m addicted to Swedish fish.

So there.

Roasted Rhubarb
Adapted from Molly’s blog Orangette

Molly says that red rhubarb is best for eye appeal, and I agree. However, the variety I have in the garden is mostly green with some red thrown in, and I deal just fine. Though I am hoping to get some starts of ruby rhubarb sometime soon. Anyone have some to share?

2 pounds rhubarb, washed, trimmed, and cut into two-inch pieces
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 vanilla bean, split in half

Put the rhubarb in a Dutch oven. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir gently. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for about thirty minutes, or until the rhubarb is tender. You may need to stir it once or twice, but don’t overdo it. Otherwise it shreds and mushes and loses some of that all-important eye appeal.

Serve plain, with whipped cream or vanilla (or strawberry) ice cream, alongside cake (or not), hot or cold.

About one year ago: Pounding the pulpit

1. Get a phone call from your friend who tells you in a I’m-trying-to-be-really-calm-but-I’m-kind-of-hysterical voice that her daughter has head lice.
2. Hang up the phone.
3. Grab the nearest head and start looking.
4. Be really uncertain because you have never seen head lice in your life and you have no idea what you’re looking for.
5. Grab another head. Find lice.
6. Call the doctor.
7. Call the pharmacist.
8. Call your mom.
9. Call your friend back. Laugh as though you’re possessed. Listen as she laughs as though she is possessed.
10. Yell at the kids to bring down all the bedding.
11. Pile the bedding in the bathroom. To get to the washing machine and toilet, you now have to scale a pile of laundry that rivals Mount Everest, but never mind that.
12. Start a load of laundry.
13. Repeat Step Twelve every forty minutes for the next ten hours, sleep, and then continue the process the following morning.
14. Email the relatives that were planning on spending the night to tell them that you are very sorry, but perhaps they might want to find other accommodations.
15. Hang up the first load of laundry.
16. Repeat Step 15 every forty minutes for the next ten hours, sleep, and then continue the process the following morning upon waking. Thank your lucky starts that the sun is shining and that you have a crazy-huge number of clotheslines.
17. Throw all the kids in the car and hightail it to a pharmacy.

18. Buy two delousing kits. Breathe deep when you see that you are spending 42 dollars and some odd cents on some lousy bugs.
19. Arrive back home and shave the little boy’s head.
20. Check with your daughter to see if she would like to have her head shaved as well. Don’t push her when she declines your offer.
21. Be very glad that just several weeks prior you checked out a children’s book from the library, a book about a prissy little girl who gets head lice. Because of that book, your kids are totally up-to-date on lice and their treatment. They are unbelievably calm about the bugs in their hair. (You are not, but you pretend to be.)
22. Vacuum the whole house.
23. Spray down the mattresses and rugs with some stinky spray that you’ve heard doesn’t work, but you don’t care about that because you are going All Out.
24. Yell at the kids. Then cry a little.
25. Feed the kids lunch. Don’t forget to eat something yourself.
26. Send the older two lice-free children on a three-mile bike ride to visit their daddy’s job site.
27. Dump toxic chemical on the two littles’ heads, soak, rinse.

28. Set the kids in front of the TV. Over the course of the afternoon they will watch both Aladdin and Beethoven.
29. Be as nit-pickily nitpicky as you can possibly be for the next three hours.
30. Surprise yourself by enjoying the task at hand. Massaging your babies’ round little noggins while listening to Robin Williams’ fabulous voice impersonations makes you feel rather zen-ish. Think of his—Williams’—poor mother and of how she must have suffered when he was ten years old and at the peak of annoyingness.
31. Continue with laundry and cleaning.
32. When hubby gets home, hand off the cleaning duties so you can finish cooking supper.
33. After dinner, force yourself to keep cleaning.
34. Collapse into bed, completely exhausted.
35. The following morning, at your husband’s suggestion, go hang out in town for several hours to recuperate. While there, drink lots of coffee, write, and imagine your head itches.
36. When you come home, the laundry is mostly finished and put away and you can mostly put the whole rotten experience behind you.

P.S. For the next several days/weeks, obsessively check heads and wash sheets.

P.P.S. For those of you who saw us in church on Sunday, know that both the doctor and the pharmacist said that there was no need to quarantine ourselves after completing the treatments. We were not carelessly jeopardizing your scalps. (My kids had a mild case and their heads never even itched.) But also know that the public schools are having trouble with lice right now so it would probably be a good idea to check heads anyway.

About one year ago: Classy Rhubarb Pie and Cream Cheese Pastry

Newsflash: MY KIDS DRINK SPINACH.

We are now, officially, “That Weird Family.” And I’m perfectly fine with it. Absolutely, completely, and perfectly fine.

I didn’t know they could or would do this until Thursday noon when I fixed them some spinach smoothies, a.k.a. green smoothies.

I had heard of green smoothies but I thought they had something to do with green tea. Earlier this week I suddenly got curious, did some digging, and learned that, lo and behold, green smoothies get their name and color from greens like spinach and kale. Fifty percent fruit and fifty percent vegetables is what one site said.

No freakin’ way, I thought. Then I recalled that I had two nanners in the freezer and thought, Well, why not? It was ten minutes till twelve and the kids were playing outside. They wouldn’t be around to witness what weird stuff went in my blender.

So I put half a bag of frozen spinach into the blender, added the bananas, and then doused the contents with some of my home-canned apple juice. Flipping the blender on and watching the contents turn bright green, I started feeling a little odd, like I was suddenly a tree-loving, tie-dye wearing, dreadlock-sporting, granola-munching, weed-smoking hippie. I was gettin’ some pretty funky vibes, there was no doubt about it.

I whirled the contents till there wasn’t one tell-tale sign of leafy-ness—the mixture was smooth, creamy, and very, very green. I poured the contents into glasses and summoned the children. They came running, but once inside they slowed down considerably, circling the table, suspiciously eyeing their glasses of green.

“Have I got a treat for you!” I crowed. “Go wash your hands and sit up. Hurry, hurry! I can’t wait for you to taste it!” They hustled, sat, and slurped, and the feedback was immediate: Yum! WOW. This is delicious! Oh boy, this is good! What is it?

“I’m not telling till you’re all done,” I said, grinning mysteriously. “Now, who wants toasted shredded wheat bread with peanut butter and honey?”

They drained their glasses in no time flat. “It’s spinach,” I said.

They froze. Horror and disbelief flashed across their trusting faces. I talked fast, happily, excitedly.

“And there’s bananas and apple juice, too. It’s sweet, isn’t it? It’s so good for you and it’s delicious! You can’t even taste the spinach, and it turns it the prettiest green. Isn’t that amazing?”

They relaxed, sucked up the last few drops, and asked for more. Score!

I made a smoothie for Mr. Handsome that evening (after a trip to town where I bought more bananas). The kids fought over the bit that remained in the blender. Miss Beccaboo, who wasn’t around when I doled it out, was severely disappointed, so I promised her another one for the next day’s lunch, this time with pineapple, banana, and strawberries, and lots of yummy spinach, too.

I didn’t get around to following up on my word (life threw me a humdinger of a curve ball—more on that later), but that evening for dessert (!!!!!), I whipped up another smoothie, this time with extra spinach, bananas, apple juice, and canned pears.

I’m shocked. I’m tickled. I’m thrilled. Mr. Handsome loves them. There is no dairy to bloat him, he of the lactose-intolerant. I love them; they make me feel light and airy and energetic. The kids love, love, love them. Need I say more?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go plant five more packets of spinach.

Green Smoothie
The formula is pretty simple: fifty percent vegetable, fifty percent fruit, and water (or fruit juice) to cover. However, at this point I’m using more fruit then vegetable. (I halfway weighed last night’s portions: 4 ounces frozen spinach, 2 bananas [about six ounces], two or three canned pears plus some juice, and about one cup of home-canned apple juice.)

I’ve read that you can increase the veggies to sixty percent, and the variations are wide-ranging and never-ending. For example, in place of spinach try dandelion greens, purslane, nettle leaves, arugula, parsley, and basil. And other suggested fruits (though a banana or avocado helps to emulsify, or make creamy, the smoothie) include apples, lemons or limes (rind removed), strawberries, pears, peaches, raspberries, and blueberries. The experts also suggest including a teaspoon of super food, such as bee pollen, hemp seeds, goji berries, pure chocolate, and wheatgrass juice, of which I have none. For now, the fact that my kids are drinking spinach is more than enough.

Basic Green Smoothie Formula
4 ounces spinach (one whole bag), fresh or frozen (don’t bother to drain)
2 bananas, fresh or frozen
1-2 cups apple juice
ice, if desired

Blend thoroughly and serve.

I will update this post as I try new variations. If you’re already a green smoothie afficionado, please share your secrets. I’m on a roll!

Updated on May 3, 2010: Strawberries and spinach make a puke-y brown smoothie. Still delicious though, if you can get past the sludge-ish-ness.

About one year ago: Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream.