Strawberry Rhubarb Smoothie

Toward the end of the summer the enormous leaves of the rhubarb shrub had started to brown around the edges so I decided it was finally time to experiment with the rhubarb juice I’ve been wanting to make. They were starting to look like mud-caked elephant ears and had taken over most of the walkway.

I thought it would be a really refreshing summer drink to blend the juice with frozen strawberries, maybe juice some fresh ginger and turmeric and throw in a little cayenne pepper.

What I did not think to do was google how and when to harvest rhubarb stalks before I started uprooting everything red. Apparently you’re supposed to harvest the large ones and leave three of the young stalks in place to help the root base propagate the next year’s growth.

The stalks were beautiful – deep fuschia ribs that I stacked in the crisper and then completely forgot about. Mea culpa.

But what I unintentionally did was “prune” for the next bloom. New stalks grew in within a few weeks and the leaves were even bigger and brighter.

So I gave it the college try and learned my second valuable lesson. Rhubarb stalks are densely fibrous and the juicer started to smell like it was burning just a few stalks in.
As luck would have it, this was also the time I decided to teach my friend Joanna how great juicing is. She seemed concerned enough by the volume. And then the burning rubber smell started to fill the kitchen. This is what I pulled out of the mesh tray when I finally decided to check.

Tire tread. Ridiculous.

So, mishaps aside, I will say that the strawberry/rhubarb smoothie was actually delicious. It was exactly the sweet-and-sour I was going for.

Just remember to clean out the pulp more often than you would for fruit.