Malinda Lo

This season’s strawberries have just started appearing in the grocery stores, and conveniently, this is the time of year that rhubarb comes in season, too. The stalks of rhubarb look like pinkish-reddish celery stalks, and apparently the leaves are poisonous. Luckily, when you cook the stalks (which are very tart) along with some sugar, they become extremely delicious. When you combine them with strawberries in a pie crust, I think you get heaven.

Last weekend I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie in honor of a friend’s 40th birthday.

Strawberries and rhubarb

The strawberries (organic, from Watsonville, CA) smelled amazing, but they were quite tart (it’s still early for really good strawberries), so I added more sugar than I usually do in a pie.

The filling before baking

Then I baked it.

The pie, fresh from the oven

And finally, we ate it.

Heaven

This pie was truly incredible, if I do say so myself. I did not expect it to turn out so well, because as I mentioned the strawberries were very tart. But to counteract that, I sprinkled the filling (and the crust) with sugar, and also dotted the top of the filling with 2 tablespoons of butter. It worked. Yum. I wish I had some left, but the entire pie was gone five hours later!

Happy weekend! May you get some pie.