Recipe 36: SCALLOPED RHUBARB (Side dish)

Rhubarb is funny. You either like it or you dont.
My grandmother grew rhubarb in her backyard for YEARS and YEARS.  she always had Rhubarb pies and Rhubarb jams and Scalloped Rhubarb.

A NOTE ABOUT RHUBARB:  Do not use the leaves or roots. The leaves and roots of Rhubarb are toxic. Only use the red stems.  Eating too much rhubarb is NOT good for your digestive system. It is a powerful laxative if eaten in large quantities. It also has an astringent quality in the mouth.  When you eat rhubarb, it can make your mouth "tender".
Believe it or not, Rhubarb is a vegetable relative of Buckwheat. It has a very earthy, tart, sour flavor. For this reason you usually see a lot of rhubarb recipes mixed with other sweeter fruits, or sugar.

This is one of my Grandmothers recipes.  Beatrice was one of the best cooks I know. When she died in 2000, I inherited "THE BOX". A little oaken box that she kept her notecards and recipes in. I open it up and it still smells like her. I feel her around me when I go through her recipes that she collected throughout the years.
She has newspaper clippings glued onto notecards that I am quite positive are over 50 years old. In 1963 her friend Bertha mailed her a recipe on a postcard. It cost 4 cents in stamps and into the box it went.

This scalloped rhubarb is in her handwriting, and not one written down by a friend.


THE RECIPE:

4 cups rhubarb. (clean rhubarb stalk, cut into 1/2" to 1" chunks)
2/3  cup sugar.
mix together and put into a 9x13 pan.

in a separate bowl:

3 cups dry bread crumbs
1/2 cup sugar
mix together and sprinkle evenly over the top of the rhubarb.

Sprinkle MORE sugar evenly over the top.
Top with several dabs of Butter. and then sprinkle drops of water over entire casserole.

bake at 350 for 1 hour