Late May and early June bring strawberries in the Kansas City area. After the long, cold, dreary miserable winter we had, I was thrilled when the first ripe strawberries appeared in my little patch every day. This year I’ve made some changes in my diet, avoiding refined sugar in everything, so I’m satisfying my sweet tooth with more fruit. I’m very grateful for my abundant strawberry crop, even if I have to squat and stretch every day for half an hour picking through the leaves to find these tiny red jewels. It’s kind of like yoga, except my back aches when I stand up. (Ok, maybe it’s only 15 minutes a day, it just seems longer.)
Every spring, my maternal grandmother made strawberry rhubarb pies and sauces. She grew the plants in her huge garden, and my cousins and I would also find it among the grass and weeds in the old abandoned garden plot, where rhubarb and asparagus plants were all that remained. The rhubarb plants seemed eternal to me then, although I’ve never had any luck keeping any alive in my own gardens. When I saw some rhubarb for sale at a country market, I bought about ten stalks. Rhubarb isn’t palatable without sugar, though, so I’ve added some no-calorie sugar substitute, which is also a no-no, but I’m not giving that up fake sugar entirely. What is life without rhubarb?
I chopped the rhubarb, cooked it in about two cups water, cooled it and then added a cup of fresh strawberries. Then I added some fake sugar to taste. I added some of the sauce to nonfat Greek yogurt. Yummy!
Here’s what I’ve written in the past about my strawberry passion. Third Annual Strawberry Photograph
Of course, I have to link to a downer article from the New York Times about how sugar is very, very, very bad for you. Is Sugar Toxic? Below is a related video that will cause you to weep. I’ve been hearing this for years, but chose to ignore it, but now I’m trying to avoid sugar completely except in fruits and vegetables. After watching this video, it sounds as if I need to cut back on fruit, too…
Catherine Sherman 
That’s a beautiful photograph!
Thanks to my wife’s green thumb, we’ve already had a couple of early strawberries from our back yard. Perhaps we were impatient by a day, but oh they were good.
During my colorful career one of my jobs was strawberry picker. Maybe that story will be told someday. 🙂
Your recipe sounds delicious! But I do think there are times when real sweetener is needed. Yeah, the thing with sugar is a bummer. Last year I went cold turkey and kicked my lifelong sugar addiction. I haven’t touched a granule since. To be honest, though, it is still an ingredient in many of the foods I eat, like chocolate chip cookies, etc. But at least I no longer directly get my hands dirty on the stuff.
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Thanks for your informative article and the YouTube video on sugar. I’m definitely going to start cutting back!
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I first discovered rhubarb in your kitchen! To this day, my strawberry-rhubarb pie is my “to die for” dish. . It’s been unusually cool in SoCal, so not much is happening out in the garden. When I come visit, I’ll help you pick some of those strawberries.
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We have seen alot of Rhubarb at the farmers market this year… one booth even had amazing pomegranate lemonaid with Rhubarb stalks soaked in it and lemon tyme and balm and huge slices of lemon and poms. Served with a stick of Rhubarb… we are almost out of season soon I suppose.
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