Rhubarb, Phyllis and the queen’s dessert
Thirty-plus years ago when I moved to Colorado, my mini high-plains acreage came with three rhubarb plants. Rhubarb fell somewhere between liver and homony in my less-than-fond childhood food memories, so the first six or seven summers I watched these plants go to seed and mowed them down when the leaves began to fade from neglect by fall. It proved a forgiving plant, however, and returned each spring, green and lovely as ever. The waste of these plants, not really a fruit, but often considered one, continued until one fall when I attended a Phillips County Fair Queen lunch as part of my duties as a reporter for one of our county’s two community newspapers. The fair queen that year happened to be Jodi Starkebaum, the granddaughter of Phyllis (Anderson) Starkebaum, a wonderful, gentle-speaking woman who went off to college, returned to the are...