I love rhubarb. If my plants gave me lots, I would use lots. But they haven’t been doing well the past couple of years. We planted them five years ago among the strawberries because strawberries and rhubarb go together, right? The second year and the third year I had lots of rhubarb – oh, the cobblers we had! Now I wonder if possibly the combo works in baking but not in planting?

All I got this year is this amount. It’s not much. But it’s something, and something is better than nothing.

When you have only a little time, you spend it doing something you really like. When you have only a little money, you spend it on something you really want. When you have only a little rhubarb, you make the recipe you think is the yummiest! I will get enough rhubarb from my garden to make cobbler just once this year, and I will enjoy every bite!

My version of rhubarb cobbler is quick. A lot of the food I make is quick. It had to be, back in the day, and still has to be. When you walk an unboring path for a lot of years, every single day, you figure out that if you spend too much time on one thing, there is not enough time for another thing. There are always other things to do! And I want to do them too!

This many stalks of rhubarb made about 2 cups all chopped up.

I put it in a small bowl and poured about ¼ cup of my strawberry jam (the one that came out a little too runny) on it and mixed it up. I put it in my baking dish. You can see the bits of strawberry jam in there. As you might realize, the jam adds not only the strawberry flavor but also the sweet balance to the tart rhubarb.

My topping is oats, flour, sugar, butter and cinnamon. It’s going to go right on top of this, so I opened my oats tin (I love my oats tin….

…You can see it’s old. I think it was a promotional item 20+ years ago or so. I have been using it ever since. One of these days I’ll show more of my various beautiful tins.)

I took a handful of oats out of the tin. I’m afraid I’m not one for measuring much. The amount that fits in a handful is about right. I put that in the bowl that the rhubarb and jam had been in, and then looked down at the rhubarb and jam in the baking dish and realized I forgot to butter the dish.

Two choices now:

• Put the rhubarb and jam in a clean bowl. This would mean I would have two bowls to wash.
• Put the rhubarb and jam in the previously used bowl. This mixes the oats with the rhubarb and jam. But that’s ok too. So that’s what I decided to do. The oats will take up some of the rhubarb’s moisture when it cooks down.

I buttered the dish and put the mixed-up rhubarb, jam and oats back in it. By the way, these are “old fashioned” oats. I like them a little bigger – those finely chopped “quick” oats get too mushy.

Now for the topping. In the same bowl, which is now empty, I put a couple heaping tablespoons of sugar, same of flour and maybe about 1 ½ tablespoons of soft butter. My butter sits in a covered glass dish in my cabinet, not in my fridge. It always has. I have not died yet.

Oh, and another tablespoon or so of oats, just so some oats are mixed in with the topping. And a couple shakes of cinnamon. Mix this up with a spoon until it’s reasonably well blended, like “coarse crumbs” as they say in recipe books.

Put the topping on top and bake at 375 until it’s done, which means golden brown on top, probably about half an hour, maybe a little longer. My nose is telling me it’s almost done. I just checked it. Not quite. I like my baked goods a little more golden brown. This is what not quite looks like:

For someone else this might be perfect, and that’s ok too. I’m sure the rhubarb is cooked down already. Just waiting for the topping to brown up. I am just thinking: I could have added dried cranberries to this. That would have been terrific too.

Now, Louisa, if only we could sit down with this cobbler and a cup of tea together…