Thinking outside the (green) box: Adventures in Surprise Vegetables.

This summer Jeff and I decided to join a green box program. Every week we pick up our share of local fruits and veggies from the Kawartha Ecological Growers. For $25 a week we get a whole pile of whatever is in season and $10 to choose between "extras". This week's extras included "Naked Pig" sausages, minimally seasoned pork sausages, prepared by a local chef, apparently there's quite a following. In our box this week we had a massive head of lettuce, green onions, cucumber, fingerling potatos and a new adventure, rhubarb! I've never cooked with rhubarb before so off to google I went to figure out what to do!


Cherries are also in season which are my absolute favourite so when I saw recipes for anything with cherries I had to explore. So Cherry Rhubarb Pie it was. We're also having some friends over for smoked salmon, so dessert was a must. I love any excuse to bake, and even more when I get to feed it to great people. Stella spent an hour sitting on the kitchen floor pitting cherries on Saturday afternoon. She loves cherries, after I had pitted one, I would peel the skin off for her and she would mash them all up. While we mashed, I would have a brief moment to get some more cherries sliced and pitted for the pie until she started yelling for more!



Rhubarb Cherry Pie Filling:
Lot's of cherries (probably 2 cups)
Sliced rhubarb in 1 inch pieces, about 1.5 cups
3/4 cup white sugar
tsp salt
2 tablespoons corn starch (could have used more)

Pie crust
2 cups flour
half cup butter
1/4 sugar (I subsituted splenda)
2 eggs yolks (save the whites for brushing the crust)
water added by tbsp to make the dough come together.


I sifted the flour and sugar together and grated the butter in. Then I added the yolks (and accidently threw the whites out, oops) and slowly added some water. Refridgerate for a while to make the dough firm and not sticky.

The pie filling was super easy, just throw all ingrediants together and make sure everything is well coated. I baked it all in the oven for an hour. We did of course have the debate of lattice vs solid pie cover. But a cherry pie always needs a lattice crust.