Usually when we tour around the garden with school kids I'll test them on different crops - 'Can anyone tell me what vegetable this is?!' kind of thing. No one got the rhubarb (before I pulled out a stalk to show them the red part). And yet when I asked them how many of their grandparents had a rhubarb plant, many of them raised their hand.
Earlier in the week I was talking to Marie - she and her husband Pious are renting some land right beside the rhubarb for growing organic vegetables, they're from Cameroon and grow a lot of crops that I've never eaten - and she was asking me about the rhubarb, how we eat it, and so on. We tasted a stalk together and I was reflecting on how rhubarb is a cultural landmark for us here. To me, it represents spring and grandparents and homesteading. It's the crop most often talked about in the spring - old timers like to scoff at the price, immigrants are baffled by the size and the color, and others pile bundles in their arms, telling me about their favourite recipe for rhubarb coffee cake. So many of us - especially in relatively rural areas - have this relationship with rhubarb, and I like to think about the parallels in other cultures and places. What is the rhubarb equivalent in Cameroon?
I love that foods represents families and relationships and geography. When I travel, I'm always seeking out the 'grandmother foods' in that place - what vegetable do the grandmothers have growing in their yard, no matter how small? What recipe do the grandmothers make every spring or every fall?