Revisiting Rhubarb: No fat, low calorie & low carbohydrate

What are those pink to reddish stalks anyway that we see in the produce shelf? It is not celery…so what do you do with them? It is time to revisit the vegetable/fruit  in my previous blog last year on Rhubarb-( a vegetable that thinks its a fruit).  I can’t help it. I love this stuff. It makes strawberries more flavorful, and adds flavor with a small amount of sweetness. Can be used in savory dishes as in Middle Eastern recipes with beef or  lamb.

Rhubarb can be made into a sauce for ice cream and is great with pork chops. Quick cooking with only 27 calories to a cup, 5 grams of carbohydrate /cup and 0 fat, rhubarb is sweetened  with a small amount of honey, coconut sugar or granulated white sugar. Great in baked goods, like crisps and tarts adding nut flour and oats, as substitute for flour,  that is lower in sugar spiking for diabetics too.

Don’t consume the green tops, they have toxins called oxalic acid.  Only goats love the tops! So cut off the tops and discard and you have great stalks to chop up and add to other fruit. Trust me they are safe to eat!

Since impromptu is sometimes the best,  I made a low fat, low carbohydrate quick munch- a cluster of rhubarb, shopped strawberries, unsweetened coconut, honey with oats, ground almond flour and a small bit of all purpose flour.   Add a drop of vanilla extract and  allspice (the secret to making rhubarb … well more rhubarb tasting).  A touch of fat with butter or soy based spread is added to the mix.  Here’s the recipe.

1 cup of  almond flour ( almonds ground to a flour consistency)

1 cup of chopped rhubarb

1 cup of sliced strawberries

1/4 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut

1/4 cup of brown sugar or coconut sugar

2 additional teaspoons of sugar

4 pats of unsalted butter

1/4 cup of all purpose flour

2 drops of vanilla

2 pinches of ground allspice

1 egg beaten

2 tablespoons of honey or maple syrup

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl except for the 2 additional teaspoons of sugar, until well combined and form into irregular mounds, like clusters about 2 inches wide. Place 10 clusters on a cookies sheet with a 2 inch separation between each one. Sprinkle with the additional sugar on the clusters and baked until the fruit is oozing out and the tops are golden.