An Early Morning in the Kitchen

I hate days that I don't get enough sleep the night before. Why I woke up at 5am this morning I'll never know. I'm a very light sleeper. I'll wake up to anything. Sadly if it is after five I tend to wake up for good. I'm not a napper and the only time I can sleep in is if I'm sick. I like my eight hours of sleep but some days . . .

At least the morning was productive. Yesterday I picked just over two pounds of rhubarb and turned it into juice. I chopped it up and added a bit of water and boiled it down for 15 minutes. Then I used a muslin and strained the pulp out. Yesterday afternoon had gotten hot and humid. So I decided to put the juice in the fridge and deal with it some other time. Well an early morning is just the time. The kitchen at least starts out cool.

I had three cups of juice. I wanted to make a simple syrup with it, but I thought the 1:1 ratio of sugar to liquid was a bit too sweet. I wanted to taste the rhubarb. So I added two cups of sugar and boiled it down for 5 minutes. Like with jam the top gets a bit foamy and it needed to be scraped off before canning (10 minutes in a boiling water bath).

The final product looks prettier than I expected. My rhubarb is mostly green, so I don't get the pretty red color. But amber isn't bad. I ended up with four and a half half-pint jars. The half of a half-pint will go straight into the fridge for trial this evening. The question is do I pair it with gin or tequila. A Rhubarita sounds pretty tasty. Would a gin and tonic taste good with rhubarb instead of lime? Would the tonic be too much and should I stick to a gin fizz? Last year I made lavender syrup and trialed that one out. I guess this year it will be rhubarb syrup. Don't you think a rhubarb mojito sounds good? Too bad my mojito mint isn't up yet. I hope it didn't die last winter.

As soon as the jars were in the canner I had another hot chore to do. One of my squash was getting moldy so I wanted to cook it. Most of it will be pureed, but I am roasting one of the squash. I figured roast squash might go well in a summer salad some day.

I feel like I've been productive already today and I haven't even had breakfast yet. Maybe it won't be such a bad day after all.