Rhubarb will always remind me of home. I associate it with dads and small back gardens, quite often the only attempt to grow something edible along with the bamboo pyramids erected for green beans, the tendrils entwining around the canes, bearing stringy, quite bitter vegetables. Rhubarb always had the most beautiful colour; pale pink with blushes of crimson and fuchsia tinged leaves, often huge. It was usually made into a sweet dish, a pie or crumble and that was fine. Ice cream or cream would melt like lava once poured onto the hot pie and custard, already boiling, would drip it's way into the crust and meld with the filling. For us kids, copious amounts of sugar would be added to tease out the sweetness, but as we got older, less would be used to let the fruit's natural tartness shine through and balance out the flavour; acquired tastes for adults. The Rhubarb Triangle in the North of England lends an air of mystery to the fruit, akin to the notorious place of a similar name where ships and planes go missing, (I once also read that this strange phenomenon also happens on trains in England, with doors flying open - although an Internet search revealed nothing).
