Rhubarb Juice

As a kid, rhubarb played a pivotal role in my life. It was a literal role, actually. As a 12-year-old in a school play, someone told me if everyone mumbles, "Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb," in a crowd scene, it sounds from the audience like there are lots of real conversations going on.

What, did you think I was going to say that every summer I used to pick rhubarb with my grandmother from her backyard garden, and then she'd teach me how to navigate life while we baked pies in the steamy, rustic kitchen? Well I wasn't. And I didn't. And that's fine. Or at least I thought it was fine until I started a food blog five years ago and realized that without a steamy, rustic, rhubarb-infused past, I had no street cred whatsoever. And that regardless of how many times I'd said "rhubarb" in a school play, no one would ever trust me.

That's why, no joke, the first guest post I ever ran on my blog was about someone else's experiences picking rhubarb and making pies with her grandmother. It's also why I've gotten a little aggressively handsy with rhubarb in the ensuing years. Fake it 'til you make it, and by "it" I mean rhubarb pie.

Or rhubarb juice. This recipe is so simple (just rhubarb and water!) and so genuine and pure that it might just make up for all those years of lost childhood. Rhubarb is quite tart, but you don't have to add sugar to this recipe. I was skeptical at first, too, but it really works. (But you can add a little to taste if you want more of a lemonade effect.) It's wildly international, too, having come to me in London via an Australian friend from her Canadian friends, who served it at a lazy weekend brunch a few weeks ago. Wildly international has got to count for something.

My friend couldn't stop talking about how good it was, and how deceptively simple. And I totally agree. Not, of course, that anyone would ever take my word for it.