Summer is one of my favorite times of the year. I’m out of school and off work. It’s warm enough for shorts and sundresses. I may get to take a vacation or two. My birthday is in the summer. And it’s the time gardens flourish!
When I came to Montana for FoodCorps and Farm to School of Park County, my boss showed me the school gardens at which I would be working. While there were lots of wonderful things to be seen, including a hydroponic greenhouse at the high school and 24 garden beds at the schools where I was stationed, I was in awe of the strawberry bed and raspberry bushes developed at the kindergarten school.
I knew the fruit would go to the kids, but since picking the fruit increases the plants’ production, I also knew I could benefit from the berries during the summer. The school gardens and the produce I shared in were a benefit to working for Farm to School, but another benefit to living in Montana and the community I was welcomed into, was becoming a part of my Montana family. I moved into the attached apartment the previous FoodCorps service member vacated, and while I was renting from a family, over those three years of living there, their family became my family. A nice thing for me, living so far away from my own family, was that they had a lot of family in town. The parents in the family of five I lived with each had a sister in town with their own family and one set of parents - Barb and Dave, or Mema and Aitxetxe (Basque for Grandpa).
Barb and Dave had an adventure-filled life before coming to Montana, but when they followed their daughters to the state for retirement, that just meant their adventures would be family-oriented once again. The couple met in Moscow, Idaho, and fell in love during college. The year they married, 1974, they moved to Seattle where Dave started working for a government agency. Ten years later Dave decided to switch roles and started working for the National Parks Service. The couple raised their three kids at the foot of Mount Rainier where Dave worked up to the position of Superintendant of Mount Rainier National Park and Acting Superintendant of Yosemite National Park. I heard lots of stories about my MT family growing up in Washington in a national park. It was here that they all gained a love of the outdoors and all things wild. Dave retired in 2016 as Superintendant of Grand Canyon National Park. This ended his 42-year career with the Federal Government and 32 years with the National Park Service, but he is still enjoying life in the wilds of Montana. Barb and I were also similar in the fact that she was a teacher. She taught one year before she and Dave married and a few years before their oldest child was born. Then she taught off and on for 20 years in public school, preschool, and parent education before retiring in 2011. Barb was always a good listener and related well to my teaching stories while sharing some of her own, both about children and parents. I always appreciated her insight coming from someone who was both a parent and a teacher and who has seen both the teaching profession and generations of people change through the years.
Barb and Dave were probably my favorite people in Livingston. They are over a decade younger than my grandparents would be and a decade older than my parents, but they felt like both to me - surrogate parents and grandparents. They treated everyone with the same wisdom and sense of humor that they shared with their own children and grandchildren, so it was impossible to not feel like a part of their family.
They hosted many family birthdays and dinners at their house where everyone contributed something delicious. (Usually, I brought a dessert.) During the February 2021 birthday trip to B Bar Ranch to go skiing, I rode down for the day with Barb and Dave. It wasn’t long into the ride that I asked how they met. That was all it took to hear the story of their courtship which started in college when they were in their 20s. Looking at them today, they’re just as in love now, if not more so, than they were then. Next year, on June 22, 2024, they will have been married for 50 years! Barb and Dave are a model of what a good relationship with a partner should be. I saw them take care of each other in little ways and big ways. They stayed in contact when one was traveling separately. They know each other’s favorite foods and drinks. They showed mutual appreciation and affection for one another - playfully joking, holding hands, and putting their arm around each other on the couch. They are #relationshipgoals!
I appreciated Barb and Dave welcoming me into their family over those three years in more ways than one. During April 2020 I lived in their house for the month (that’s another story), and was always welcome to come over. Barb fixed a zipper on a jacket while we watched The Great British Bake Off. Dave lent my parents and me the use of his truck when they visited, and we wanted to kayak the Yellowstone River. I recreated their favorite cakes for three of their birthdays.
I stopped by to say “hi” when walking the dogs since their house was within walking distance. I went over to share dessert or dinner with Barb or I sent Dave back with something baked when Barb was away and he came to the house. And in the summer I was always welcome to come over and pick raspberries from their impressive raspberry patch, snag a few strawberries, and cut rhubarb. Lots and lots of rhubarb.
The couple was generous enough to share the fruit from their garden, so I was happy to return the favor and share my creations with them. I made canned rhubarb butter in May 2020 and rhubarb-pear butter and rhubarb barbecue sauce in 2021, all of which turned into Christmas gifts.
I made strawberry rhubarb, raspberry rhubarb, and blueberry rhubarb pie (maybe my favorite!). I also made rhubarb muffins with cinnamon butter crumble and raspberry almond scones with fresh-picked raspberries. It seemed appropriate that the last pie I made in Montana (31 in total, not counting the 22 I baked and sold under my business in 2020 and 2021) was a raspberry rhubarb pie for my MT family. The caption I shared it under said it all: “On Saturday I become nomadic again (hopefully for the last time) as I leave MT to return to OK. This last pie is raspberry rhubarb for some of my MT family. The Montana shape is a little off-center and grew after baking. I'm sure there's a metaphor there somewhere. It's bittersweet.” Mema and Aitxetxe will always have a special place in my heart, and I know I have a standing invitation to visit my MT family again. When I do, they said baking isn’t required, but it wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t show my love and appreciation with a pie.
Ken had three delicious recipes in The Harvest Baker featuring rhubarb and strawberries. They were strawberry rhubarb muffins, brown sugar rhubarb tart squares, and strawberry-filled shortbread bars. Since I don’t (yet) have a rhubarb supplier in Oklahoma, I had to use frozen rhubarb which worked just as well. (I found it at Sprouts.) I have shared the strawberry rhubarb muffin recipe below for you to try at home!
Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins
Ingredients:
Butter and sugar for the cups
1 cup finely chopped fresh rhubarb
⅔ cup plus 1½ tablespoons sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom or nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and partially cooled
3 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
½ cup diced fresh strawberries
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Butter a standard-size 12-cup muffin pan and dust each of the cups with a little sugar. Set aside. Combine the rhubarb and 1½ tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Mix well and set aside.
Combine ⅔ cup sugar in a mixing bowl with the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cardamom, and cinnamon. Whisk well to mix.
In a separate bowl whisk the eggs until frothy, then whisk in the sour cream, melted butter, milk, vanilla, and lemon zest. Make a well in the dry mixture and add the liquid mixture. Stir gently, until just a few streaks of the dry mixture remain, then add the rhubarb and strawberries and fold them in with as few strokes as possible to minimize staining the batter.
Divide the batter evenly among the cups. Sprinkle 2 or 3 big pinches of sugar over each muffin. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the muffins are well risen and golden brown on top. Transfer the muffins to a cooling rack and cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Remove the muffins and continue to cool on the rack, bottoms facing up. These are best served warm. Refrigerate leftovers. Reheat leftovers, loosely wrapped in foil, in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 7 to 10 minutes.
The Harvest Baker (c) by Ken Haedrich, recipe excerpted with permission from Storey Publishing.
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