I have always liked the taste of rhubarb. It is especially welcome after a winter of eating mostly canned fruit. Mother made rhubarb pie when the stalks were crisp and full of juice. We always had plants growing somewhere around the garden spot. Rhubarb doesn't demand much. Enough moisture to keep it alive during the hot summer months is about it. It is one of the first things up in the spring.

Mother never canned rhubarb. She did make a Rhubarb Sauce. No amount of sugar could cut that sharp acid taste for me. (I have a recipe that makes it with strawberry jello.) If Mother made one rhubarb pie in the spring, that was it. She didn't know the secret of cutting the sharp flavor. I learned it quite by accident. The addition of egg to the filling is the answer.

Rhubarb freezes well. Just cut off the leaves, reduce the stalk to one inch pieces and measure out into freezer bags. That is it. It doesn't need to be blanched. The bags should be labeled with the date. I don't want to find last year's rhubarb still around after this year's crop is gone.

RHUBARB CREAM PIE
1 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons plain flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine
2 beaten eggs
3 cups rhubarb, cut in 1 inch lengths
Uncooked pastry for 2 crust 9 inch pie

In large bowl blend together sugar, flour, salt and orange peel with rhubarb. Add melted butter and eggs . Mix together well. Let set in bowl for fifteen minutes or so for the juice to start to flow. Pour into prepared unbaked 9 inch pie shell. Top with lattice top. Bake at 450 F. for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 F. and bake another 30 minutes or until the juices thicken.