on rhubarb
and closing tabs
Dear dispatch pals,
It’s Friday, July 24th, 2026, and it’s a beautiful, sunny day in Queens.
Here’s a little dispatch to kick off your weekend.
Rhubarb’s been on my mind lately, as the splendid sour stick’s season comes to an end.
Rhubarb and I are old pals—it used to spring up all along the side of the now long-gone barn by my family’s house in New Brunswick (Canada, not New Jersey). As a kid, I’d be sent to pull a few stalks up for strawberry rhubarb pie, and I’d always grab a spare stalk to chew on, raw and tart. (I am nothing if not a sour patch kid. I also love a salt and vinegar chip and will drink straight pickle brine if given the chance.)
So I’d never really thought about rhubarb as a commodity until I moved to NYC and had to buy it, rather than grab it from where it grew wild.
Reminder not to eat the leaves, if you find yourself with a whole rhubarb plant! They’re toxic, and not in the fun Britney Spears way!
Did you know there are two phases to the rhubarb season?
The first rhubarb of the year is something called forced rhubarb, grown in darkness so it crops up early and arrives more vibrantly pink and sweeter than its wild counterpart (though still delectably tangy and grassy).
Later season rhubarb—like the kind I have in my fridge right now, thanks to a lucky find at the Eataly in Flatiron, if anyone in NYC is on the hunt for one last fix—is rhubarb as it usually grows wild in the sun, more green and puckeringly tart. Rhubarb is perennial, it comes back every year, but it can’t be forced every year, because the darkness is stressful for the plant. It grows taller and faster when forced because it’s looking for light.
Personally, this was a bit of a forced rhubarb winter and spring for me, but the challenges have left me feeling a bit sweeter (if not particularly taller or pink-er). I’ve been working to captain my own ship a little more instead of waiting for some miscellaneous future date or permission to work on things I care about or do things I’ve wanted to do.
Here’s a little taste of what I’ve been up to, if I might influence you into searching for yourself in sunny places.
Dropping by Bryant Park when the woodcocks were migrating through
Finally putting together a sourdough starter
Spending a few days working on a play at Hudson Valley Writers Residency up in Coxsackie, NY
Working every other weekend for Bakery Jolie Laide
Taking a watercolor painting class at Brooklyn Brainery
And doing things like buying the aptly named Quest wine that my family suggested I try a couple years ago, which I’d been saving in my endless scroll of tabs ever since (it was like $20, I should’ve just done that sooner, it was very good!)
In fact, I went through all my (I hesitate to say, roughly 400 phone tabs) and started cataloguing them and simply doing things that are quick, easy, and inexpensive. I feel lighter! And I have a new, functional cookie scoop!
So, if you’ve been thinking about going on a personal journey to find yourself, I can speak from experience when I say, I highly recommend it.
A rhubarb drink recipe
I love making rhubarb simple syrup as a way to keep the rhubarb going well into the summer. You can keep the solids and add lemon juice and salt to make a rhubarb compote (excellent on brown bread with butter) and mix the syrup with seltzer for a daytime tasty bev, if a cocktail’s not your thing.
Rhubarb syrup:
2 cups rhubarb, roughly chopped (around 3 medium rhubarb stalks)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
Combine syrup ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer about 20 minutes. Let cool and strain into a glass container. Store in the fridge up to 1 month.
Cocktail recipe:
Is it a vesper? Is it a gimlet? Did the two finally get married after years of will-they-won’t-they? What matters is, it’s lovely.
1 oz vodka
1 1/2 oz london dry gin
1 oz lillet blanc
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz rhubarb syrup
Shake with ice and strain into a coupe.
For the visual learners, a video version.
And, if you still have any rhubarb hanging around, here are a few other rhubarb recipes that float my boat:
This olive oil rhubarb cake from Halifax’s Dan McKay-Wright (Mothership Breads)
Justine Doiron’s rhubarb salad
Now and always, strawberry rhubarb pie
in other news
I’ve had one heck of a week! (Nothing here is an affiliate link, I just thought you might be interested in what’s happening in my little corner of the food world.)
I finally got to meet the lovely Marie-Charlotte Piro (who you might remember from her “at the kitchen table” interview) in person at an Eataly event, where you can now find Olio Piro olive oil and her balsamic vinegar, Bonini.
I jetted out to the Hamptons—yes, you may call me Captain Fancy—to visit Camp Rubirosa, the East Hampton outpost of the popular SoHo Italian-American joint. The reason for the season (er, cocktail party) was the Rubirosa team launching their jarred sauces on FreshDirect.
And this morning, I woke up early to visit the New York Stock Exchange for the opening bell (turns out, not edible) with my college buddy Norberto, who happens to be, in my humble and not at all biased opinion, the greatest history-focused content creator in the game. Here’s a sample of his work for your viewing pleasure, since I’m still trying to decide if “stock brokers have pizza Fridays” is news-worthy.
don't worry gang, I'll fix capitalism
and that’s the latest dispatch from my kitchen.
Thanks as always for reading and I hope you have a swell summer weekend ahead of you.
Talk soon,
Also, 400 tabs is too many tabs
You are the quintessential Renaissance woman in all the best ways. So talented!