Rhubarby Yumminess!

I adore rhubarb! I've loved it since I was a kid and we'd pick it from my aunt and uncle's garden and eat it sour as can be. Or dipped in some sugar. But most of all, I loved my Mom's homemade rhubarb rolls. Now, in my new backyard, I have all kinds of yummy things growing. We have red and black current bushes, plum, apple, cherry and black cherry trees, raspberries and blackberries. But we don't have rhubarb. Which I plan on remedying next spring (or whenever it is one plants rhubarb). So when I saw some rhubarb for sale at the store, I couldn't resist buying a bundle.

Now, I did't have a recipe for my mom's homemade rhubarb rolls. And there probably isn't one. She's a "take some of this and, you know, as much as you need of that" kind of a baker. So I was on my own. And so I made some yesterday off the top of my head. And it was so yummy!! Like my mouth is filling with water type of yummy! We ate it warm with vanilla ice cream and hot rhubarb sauce/stewed rhubarb.

I started out with my Dad's super duper biscuit recipe. Norwegian in brackets for my Norwegian friends.

Biscuits

4 cups flour (mel)
1/2 cup sugar (sukker)
1 tsp salt
6 tsp baking powder (bakepulver)
1 tsp baking soda (natron)
1 cup shortening (melange)
2/3 cup buttermilk (kulturmelk)
2/3 cup milk (melk)

Blend all dry ingredients together well. Blend in shortening. Add milk and buttermilk to make dough. Sprinkle enough flour to make it dry enough to handle by hand.

At this point instead of cutting it out into biscuit shapes, I rolled the dough out ino a rectangle. I put some butter on, then sprinkled some sugar and 3-4 handfuls of sliced rhubarb. Roll up and cut into slices.

Lay the slices into a pan.

 In the meantime you need to make a sugar syrup. I take about 3 cups of sugar in a saucepan with enough water to dissolve the sugar, plus a little bit more (it's not an exact science, at least not when I do it). Bring to a boil, turn down low and let simmer for 10 minutes. Pour most it over the rhubarb rolls, reserving a bit to make the rhubarb sauce. Bake in oven at 350 F (180 C) until golden brown on top. To make the rhubarb sauce add another 3-4 handfuls of rhubarb to the reserved sugar syrup plus another 2 cups of sugar. If you want it to be thicker, liked stewed rhubarb, don't add water. I wanted to make a sauce to pour over the vanilla ice cream and rhubarb rolls, so I added a tiny bit of water. When it cooks it gets pretty runny so be careful not to add too much water.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream or even just plain cream, topped with the hot rhubarb sauce. *drool*

I would love to show you a picture of the finished product in all it's sticky glory but I was so busy eating, I forgot to take one. So you'll have to make it yourself to see how it turns out. ;)

Kitchen

Well I'm back for another before and after session. And this time, as I'm sure you've figured out by the title, it's the kitchen. We're still not 100% finished but we're mighty close. I was planning on blogging more regularly now, but my back has completely different plans than I do. So I'm just taking it as it comes. So here goes. First let's see what it looked like before.

The kitchen was two rooms before. We knocked out the walls separating the kitchen from the dining room/living room and turned it into a bigger kitchen.

This is the same view after a great deal of ripping apart. The walls are down and the all the other walls are stripped down to the bones so we could check for rot. And if you notice on the right side there is some insulation where there originally was a window. They had taken it out and covered it up. We reinstalled a window there. 

And here we are after the outer walls have also been removed, and rebuilt with new studs and insulation. The window has been installed as well. 

Getting closer.

And closer.

And.....tada!! This is the same view. We still have some work to do. The trim around the door needs painted. The doors themselves need painted as well. And we're still missing the foot boards and one cabinet door. But I love it. Especially the window seat. 

And here is the rest.

It's exactly the white kitchen I've been dreaming about.