Rhubarb Butter

V is for Variety and O is for Old-fashioned

Welcome to the Vegan Month of Food (VeganMoFo)  I intend to post 20 times during the month of September – all about vegan food. Check out the gals who organize the project here, and search out other fantastic vegan bloggers. I decided on the theme of “V is for Variety” because, honestly, once I quit the chicken breast – my food choices exploded! Join me!

Some old-fashioned things are great, like this Rhubarb Butter. My grandmother’s Apple Butter will never go out of style either. Handmade quilts are another old-fashioned thing that I will never tire of. I love the feel of layers of quilts on my bed in the middle of a cold Michigan night. Sunday dinners, roaring fires, board games, tomato sandwiches, singing around the piano, homemade pasta, reading out loud to someone, neighborliness: these simple things top my list of great old­-fashioned stuff.

Other old-fashioned things need to go away: film cameras, record players, red food coloring, eating so much meat (there, I said it), saying ‘groovy,’ cream of mushroom soup from a can….the world is just filled with so many great and new items, why settle?  

Here’s one old-fashioned thing that we MUST say bye-bye to: the homemade laundry soap recipe I shared a few weeks ago.  Yuck! It doesn't work, it leaves clumps of soap on the clothes, it never dissolves, and it was not good for anything – not even rags. (I decided not to delete the original post, because it includes a great picture of my little puppy, Cabby, who we recently lost – I cannot bear the thought of deleting her!!)

My advice about old-fashioned things? Quit the soap. Make the Rhubarb Butter.

Rhubarb Butter

Here’s what you need:

6 cups chopped rhubarb

½ C water

1 C white sugar

1 C dark brown sugar

1-1 ½ t cinnamon

3 pint jars

Here’s what you do:

Place chopped rhubarb and water in food processor and process until the rhubarb is in tiny bits. You might want to do this in batches.

Place rhubarb and all its juice, sugars and cinnamon in a heavy bottom pot. Simmer and stir until thick. I like mine pretty thick, so I cook it until a spoon scraped on the bottom of the pot actually parts the butter in two.  You must babysit the butter while it’s cooking so it doesn’t scorch. It goes from runny to thick pretty quickly.

Spoon butter into 3 clean pint size canning jars. Wipe the rims of the jars clean with paper towels and seal with new lids. Carefully lower jars into simmering water, using rubber tongs or special canning tongs so you don’t drop the jars.

Process in boiling water for 10 minutes, remove and wait for the ping which tells you the jar is sealed.