FREEZER STASH

There is an ongoing freezer shortage at my house. Anyone lucky/unlucky enough to live with me knows I have a tendency to fill the freezers with bags of post season rhubarb. This means that in order to remove most anything from the deep freeze requires hoisting ziploc bags of pie plant out of the way. By the time you've completed this task chances are pretty good you will have forgotten what it was you were searching for in the first place. 

I'm very prudent with the frozen pie filling, always worrying that I'll exhaust my supply before the next crop swings through town. My housemate(s) assures me this is highly unlikely and claims he has the freezer burns and mild concussions (from free-falling bags of rhubarb) to prove it.

January and February are blustery months where I live. Jealously watching @benbmims preparing jewel-like marmalade on the west coast, I complain to no one in particular, "I want to live where you can casually pluck citrus from your backyard tree!" No one replies; the only sound is ice pelting the windshield of my car. By the way, regardless of what you read in the cyber gospel, frozen rhubarb is not really the same creature as its spring-fresh sister. It unleashes puddles, (rivers, really) of moisture and is far better suited to a seriously par-baked crust. 

Incidentally, the photo of the pre-baked shell is totally untouched; that little 'heart' is sun peeking through the curtains. I like to think Its a sign from my rhubarb-loving mother. She was also an avid photographer, Always behind the camera, swapping lenses, even developing film in a small darkroom in our basement. She had an eye for composition and light and I wish she was still around to take the pictures. I also miss the way she chose to á la mode her slices of fruit pie with chocolate ice cream which drove my vanilla loving father nuts. I don't have any ice cream in the house because there isn't any room in the freezer because of, well, the rhubarb. For our purposes, whipped cream steps in as a pretty agreeable understudy.