Rhubarb Juice

And Resourceful Relatives

Every spring, I make rhubarb juice and think about my mom and my grandma. Grandma sometimes served us rhubarb juice as a special treat, and I remember Mom making it and pouring it into cottage cheese containers to freeze.

Grandma and Grandpa left the riches of Pennsylvania as newlyweds and moved to the mountains of British Columbia. They roughed it in thin little shacks through harsh winters and did crazy things like catch the freight train to get to the hospital to deliver their second baby.

Grandma put her heart into making a cozy home for her family without modern conveniences. She canned moose meat and fought with temperamental wood stoves and hauled water in buckets and kept her food cold in the creek. She says now that she felt most contented when she was in her little cabin with her babies cared for and happy, with all the firewood and water hauled and ready to be used.

Money was scarce, and groceries more difficult to attain than in my world. Grandma raised her own vegetables as much as possible, but fruit was hard to come by in that northern climate. They learned to make do with what they had.

I think Grandma sometimes longed for the full pantries in Pennsylvania, but she is not the type to sit and cry when there is work to be done. So she tied on her apron and experimented with rose hip jelly and served dandelion salad in the spring. She picked saskatoons and huckleberries and preserved them. The rhubarb juice that I remember may not have figured in those early lean years since it takes some store-bought ingredients, but Grandma did not stop being resourceful when life got financially easier. She made juice out of what she could grow in her garden, and she made it special enough to serve the most uppity guests.

My own mom didn’t—and doesn’t—waste time mourning when life looks grim. She faces problems head-on, with a courage and fortitude that amazes me. She also made a bright, cheerful home out of every house or trailer she lived in, and served good meals with the simplest of foods, often grown herself. If the leg fell off of a bed or sofa, she propped it up with a coffee can and went on about her business.

Mom worked hard to give us a good life, stretching a tiny budget to keep us fed and clothed. The lack of finery in my childhood is something I have no regrets about.

That is what I think of every spring when I pull red stalks, simmer them, and pour the juice into containers. I can buy boxes of luscious Concord grapes if I want to and make them into juice—and I often do. I live in a tight house with a button to push for heat. So far my life has been cushy and comfortable compared to my mom’s and my grandma’s. But I hope I can still retain and pass on a fraction of that grit and strength, that aptitude for making something beautiful out of nothing, and that ability to walk forward when I’d rather crawl under the bed.

And even if I don’t measure up in stamina, I can at least serve rhubarb juice to my guests like the tough women in my family line.

Here is a rough recipe in case you want to try it:

Rhubarb Juice

-2 quarts coarsely chopped rhubarb

-2 quarts water

Boil until mushy.

Strain.

Add a package of strawberry jello (while the juice is still hot) or other strawberry juice mix and sugar to taste. Freeze.

To serve, thaw until slushy and add sprite or club soda.

Note: I often add more strawberry flavored drink mix when I serve this, and dilute it according to taste.