Eating From Mary's Garden

Celebrating independence with the mystery of homemade grilled rhubarb strawberry crumble

I never tasted rhubarb until we found Mary’s garden on the edge of our plot of the forest. So tart. Inscrutable. What would this celery-looking child of the buckwheat family taste like with strawberries?

I am a lightly reformed picky eater, so I took my time nearing the stalks in the kitchen. Add to that, we still don’t have an oven so I had many excuses keeping me from that first bite. Despite aversion and blockade, this weekend I discovered a cast iron pot over an open flame makes a delicious crumble. Sweet and tart, oats crisped by cubes of butter.

“Wow!! You go frontier girl!,” my mom texted when I told her what I’d created. Rhubarb was not a food our Argentine-American household experienced, so it felt right to explore this fruit of Americana delight on Independence Day while thinking of my own citizenship ritual as an adolescent, awkward standing for a camera, document in hand. My brothers in matching vests my grandmother had knit. The office lost my papers, which meant we had to return to swear me in after my mother, grandmother and brothers. The photo I recall may not have even been taken the day I became a citizen. Yet, these are the stories we tell ourselves.

What does it mean to pledge allegiance to a nation? Up in the Catskills I see most people see their declaration a waving of a flag, if not many, across their yards and mailboxes, striped and starred bunting waving in the breeze. We hung no flag, just a pastel-colored rainbow at the door, but I did tear up when I heard the Star Spangled Banner playing on the radio.

Here, it meant slowing down, marveling at the mountains and farmland on a drive, giving thanks for the stroke of a butterfly wing that allowed my family the opportunity to come here in the 70s. Here, it means lifting a fork to mouth, feeling the tartness at the edges of my tongue, and giving grace.