Capogiro Gelato Artisans

Rhubarb: A Love Story

I was always both confused and intrigued by rhubarb. When I was a kid, my parents would ship me off to Minnesota to stay with my grandparents, so that they could take an 'adult vacation' of their own (don't ask). So I would spend my time there having wholesome Midwestern fun, jumping off of sun-bleached wooden docks into one of the 10,000 murky lakes, barreling down their block on a rusty old cruiser, and trying to save myself from being sucked dry by the Volkswagen-sized native mosquitoes.

It was a simpler time. It was one of those summers that I first fell in love... with rhubarb.

My grandmother would harvest this strange plant from her garden in the summertime, an alien looking stalk that she told me was poisonous if not prepared correctly. She would cook it down with loads of sugar, then can, can, can for hours. When she first made me try a taste from the bubbling pot of pink, I tried to run. At last she succeeded in her efforts and I tasted one of the most unique things in my life. Tart and sweet at the same time, rhubarb demands the exact proportion of sugar to stalk to bring out it's majesty.

I remember at the end of my visit heading to the Minneapolis airport with a empty milk gallon full of sweet rhubarb (security was much more lax then). Ever since, I've taken every chance I can to have rhubarb, whether baked into a pie with it's amigo strawberry, or simply on it's own.

My love affair with rhubarb reached a new peak today when I came into Capo and my eyes fell on Rabarbaro gelato. After one taste, I was back at the lake in the summertime, my lips sticky and sweet, the summer sun setting over the trees, the mosquitoes waiting to strike.