Every few days I read the food news and cat news that appears on my computer on the news app, and yesterday was intrigued to see this headline under the allrecipes logo. I’m a member of Costco and, in fact, planned to go to Costco this coming weekend. So I was eager to see this new “bakery item”:
What was it?
Sadly, here’s what it turned out to be:
There’s more about the abomination at Southern Living.
Shoot me now! Another inappropriate use of rhubarb. I’ve had plenty of strawberry pie in my life, including the small one below, and they are fantastic. Why would somebody ruin this by putting rhubarb in it?
Yes, yes, I know people will rush to comment, “I love rhubarb!” But consider this. Suppose you were writing on your website and said, “I love the Beatles’ songs” (which happens to be true). Then you’re swarmed by people saying, “Well, I don’t like the Beatles.” (This happened many times.) Given that these things are a matter of taste, both literally and figuratively, what does it add to the discourse to say that you have a different taste?
For those of you with a cardboard palate:
@costcoguide New strawberry rhubarb pastries in the Costco bakery. All butter pastry filled with strawberry rhubarb and a crystallized sugar crust. A good balance of tart and sweet. The crunch of the sugar on top is a nice touch too! #costco #foodies #costcoguide #snacks #breakfast
What a disappointmen! I’m a latecomer to rhubarb; we didn’t grow it in West Texas and I didn’t meet it until I went to California. Looks like a lot of trouble to me.
Taking this post in the spirit in which (I think) it’s offered, I’ll just say this warmed my heart and I hope my neighbourhood Costco is also offering the same “abomination”.
I suspect the interior of the confection is candied, so possibly the rh*b**rb has been beaten into submission.
Why? For the same reason (so I’m told) that hog maws are added to chitlins. As an extender.
Agreed. A food of poverty. Strawberries are too expensive! 🙁
It’s just that. A discourse. We all like different things. Saying you like something that someone else doesn’t or vice versa is just conversation. It’s neither judgment nor criticism. Every time I say I love aubergines, a friend tells me she hates them. I don’t take it personally. It just means that I know I never need too cook it for her.
But if you tell me that you love horrible lychees, then that’s different, I’ll take that as personal criticism 😉
I’m sorry to say this, but I love lychees. There! I got my own back!
Traitor! 😉😂
There are many foods that other people adore that I cannot stomach due to, I guess, texture and other hypersensitivities. I have to admit, I envy people being able to enjoy eggplant (aubergines), shrimp, lobster, watermelon, mushrooms, zucchini, cucumbers, mussels, pecans, walnuts, etc. They MUST be good if so many people like them, but I cannot tolerate them. Nausea/vomiting are involved if I try. Rhubarb, though, I can take or leave. It’s pretty boring at best to me. I suspect it’s sometimes used just because it grows easily and fast–I’m told (by the QI elves and Stephen Fry) that sometimes one can HEAR rhubarb growing, especially when it’s put in dark growing places.
There are several foods that can be, literally, hard to swallow. I can get throat spasms from pastry, rice or bread, especially if I don’t drink water with them. It can be a sign of eosinophilic esophagitis, but I’ve been tested for that, and I’m waiting for another appointment with the hospital. A friend with asthma also struggles with certain foods, including mushrooms. There are quite a few things that can trigger it.
Maybe you can check with your doctor as I think it would be awful to live without aubergines and mushrooms, although having rhubarb may be a compensation😁😪
The only food I truly cannot abide is milk. I feel sick just seeing other people drink it.
I have had and enjoyed very good rhubarb pie. But I always thought strawberry rhubarb is overrated. There are better recipes that don’t involve strawberry.
+1
And even BETTER recipes that don’t involve rhubarb! 🙂
Yeah, That’s bogus.
Here’s what I do lately:
Mash up some nice strawberries with a fork right on the plate. Juice naturally forms.
Spoon on some ricotta into that right out of the container.
Wicked good. Easy to adapt to other things.
Reason I say this :
The strawberry is what makes strawberry rhubarb any good. So why not just get all strawberry. I haven’t eaten any SR for years but I’ll make a point to get a sample now.
I normally strongly dislike mixing sweet and savory things (with some notable exceptions).
But years ago in Provence, I found that I adored putting savory goat cheese (the fresh stuff, not aged goat cheese which I love on its own) on breakfast toast and then topping it with cherry (or strawberry) preserves. We were able to get both from the most local sources imaginable. Heavenly!
Ricotta and strawberry mash sounds very similar. 🙂
LOL when I saw the picture of that new Costco offering. You don’t have to like rhubarb if you don’t want to. Me? It’s watermelon. Gritty, seedy, Feh!
I don’t strongly dislike watermelon. I can eat it without making a face. But I would never seek it out, for the reasons you list. And I would add: Mostly tasteless.
Yes. All of the above, and tasteless, too. 🙂
As a kid in Ireland, I used to pick fresh rhubarb, dip in sugar and eat…tarty but good…
I still like it cooked with ginger and orange juice, served with plain yoghurt or ice-cream. Rhubarb crumble is pretty good.
You can add strawberries but then you are mixing two very different flavours.
BTW the photo does look disgusting…
I have to say I’m with the good Professor on this one. You can keep your stinkin’ rhubarb.
I routinely am jealous of people who can eat dairy. My body declines to allow it. Very inconvenient, given how many restaurants delight in adding cheese or cream to virtually everything. Dessert is often a lost cause. But not pizza! To some people I know this is blasphemy, but you can have excellent pizza without cheese.
I grew up with rhubarb. Everyone in Minnesota, it seemed, in the 1960s and 70s grew it.
I never liked it, especially the strings in it. Bleh. Still don’t like it, though I can eat rhubarb-containing pies without making a face.
I think it was a food of poverty and kept on for reasons of nostalgia. Lutefisk and lefsa were also very popular among people of Scandinavian heritage (but never, in my experience, the fantastic Norwegian smoked salmon, WTF?!). When I eventually traveled to Norway, where my relatives came from, and asked about lutefisk and lefsa, they laughed and said, we don’t eat THAT! That was survival food, especially lutefisk.
This past spring, we visited Door County, Wisconsin (me for the first time), which has a strong Scandinavian heritage. We ate at Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant in Sisters Bay, Wisconsin, mainly because it was almost the only place open in early April. I had low expectations. What a pleasant surprise! I had fish and chips and my wife had various salads. We ate things I might never have ordered: Pickled cabbage, beet(root) salad, and coleslaw (which I do order regularly). These were all excellent, in fact. The pickled cabbage was sublime. We also had local cherry pie which was also excellent.
My grandfather and later my father grew rhubarb. It is a perennial, so when the crowns started to sprout, they were blanched: covered with an inverted tub to exclude the light. The resulting stems were neither stringy nor particularly tart. They made a very acceptable fruit-like filling for a pie in the spring when no other fruit was around. This was in the decade or so after WWII, when imported fruit was all but unobtainable in the UK. The blanching process results in very low yields, so commercial growers do not do this. Of course, why anyone would bother with rhubarb in the season when strawberries are available is beyond me.
One of my happiest moments of last summer (2024) was finding rhubarb growing in the poisons garden at Blarney Castle in Ireland. I dragged my wife to witness that my lifelong opinion was officially validated.
It seems that during WW2 the govt encouraged people to eat the leaves – which are truly toxic – with some “negative outcomes”
Came back to check on this later in the afternoon. Just wanted to say this is my kind of discourse!
I’ve never tried strawberry rhubarb pie, and until recently never had any interest in doing so. But your hatred of the pie has had the surely unintended effect of piquing my interest in the pie so much that I now want to try it for myself. I hope Costco is giving out samples.
Better get it soon, as they say it is a temporary product. And you can have my share!
apple rhubarb pie is very good.
To you, maybe!
I guess you wouldn’t want anything to do with Barbara’s Rhubarb bar. https://youtu.be/ZYkBf0dbs5I?si=D6qBdCokvR_IYmYl