h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My grandparents gave up the hoime farm when they were in the early 70's, and bought a teeny house only 2 doors down the street from us. Besides tilling their garden, and burning their trash weekly, one of my tasks was the first spring-time picking of rhubarb. Pies and sauce, it was a "spring tonic", the first edible stuff of the year.

My method, ... 1 stalk for me , 2 stalks for the basket. Okay, so I had no appetite for dinner that night, but it was sooooo good.

I have since been told that in a raw state, it's marginally toxic. Who knew?

The stalks are marginally toxic. The leaves are toxic in a big way . But, yes, no one is there in the rhubarb patch to warn you of the dangers. You learn from experience.

rhubarb


We used to get these rhubarb and custard sweets from the corner shop down the road for 25p for a quarter bag.

Ever seen the cartoon Rhubarb and Custard?

Somehow, I expect that I soon shall *peering at Vix's journal*

I used to eat the sweets and watch the cartoon

I missed so many cartoons ... As a youth, we had but a single channel on TV, and it was considered lazy to watch anything before evening. And once on my own, I was either too drunk and stupid, or in too remote of locations, to see any stuff.

You had to be drunk to watch Rhubarb and Custard, because I'm sure the animators were

Take a look at Vixen's latest journal entry ... She found an episode on You-tube. I haven't watched it with sound (too early and didn't wanna wake the missus) but it looks totally silly. Which is always good.

Last night, one of our channels brought us Ice Age again.

We still see it on on one of the childrens channels, after 8 in the evening they have a couple of hours of nostalgia, showing things that I watched as a kid, it's fabulous

About ten years ago, I wrote a mock-serious journal called the "Rhubarb Quarterly." It highlighted the fact that its key ingredient, oxalic acid, was a potent antidote to the CFS's that were destroying the ozone. I had a cover illutsration of the Earth as seen from space, with rhubarb plants in flower pots orbiting it.

There were literary references to Shakespeare's use of rhubarb for treating Lady MacBeth. There were Dragons-and-dungeons games in which rhubarb leaves were used as shields against vegetarian wolves and other bad guys. It also introduced Ecnirp the backward Prince, for whom rhubarb was the solution to every problem.

God, that was a fun thing to make. On the back cover, there was a picture of knights marching off to the Crusades, holding rhubarb-leaf shields, and hoping to rescue the rhubarb fields of Jerusalem from the Saracens.

There was also an article about the rhubarb fields that line the handicapped-access road to the top of Mount Everest.

For something that simply grows wild all over this province, I never would have thought it had such a history.

I just enjoy it as a pie (with a bit of custard) or a simmered sauce now. Oh, and blended with strawberries as a jam. Yummm on that.

I believe rhubarb originated in Mongolia.

My history classes never mentioned Mongol hordes traversing southern Ontario, scattering seeds.

That's because history teachers worldwide are trying to cover up a rogue form of continental drift that put Ontario next to Mongolia for a few hundred years back in the Geodesic Era, which was between the Jurassic and the Halfassedic Eras.

Now wait a minnit !!! Our edjumucation sistemm is goodly !!! We done herd all abowt that Halfassedic stuff ... Thass the half aphrodesiac, half traditional Jewish system, roite?

Half afrodesiac, half amnesiac, and one-third Bricabrac

Ah, so one of my home reno projects then?

Apparently. Which one of your homes had the reno project?

The one that was bought up by the Art's Council, and is now in front of the government buildings.

They've moved it around a bit? I can relate to that.
With a little luck, they'll eventually move it to someplate tropical where palm branches wave back and forth, and little monkeys come by with drinks on silver trays.