Oh, rhubarb. You ubiquitous late spring presence, you vegetable of desserts. I can never resist you when I see you at the farmer’s market, all brightly colored and stalky and tempting. I’ve done rhubarb pie before on this ‘blog, but I was thinking it might be delicious to do something slightly different than the standard combination of strawberry and rhubarb. Don’t get me wrong; I adore strawberry rhubarb pie, but decided to mix raspberries with my rhubarb instead, just to mix things up a bit. I know, it’s crazy, but everything turned out all right in the end, I promise. Won’t you come along for the ride?

Ride on, soldiers, at girlcate.com.

It’s always good to get out of the city. Kenan and I took the opportunity presented by the long weekend to hop a bus down to the outskirts of Baltimore to visit Kenan’s uncle Ephraim, for the Fourth of July weekend (once again, this post is a couple weeks late coming out, but bear with me – it’s gonna be fun). Ephraim and his wife, Sarah, live in a big old plantation house so beautiful and full of awesome things that it makes me want to rethink my existence as a city dweller. When the weather’s nice, they eat all their meals on their patio, surrounded by Sarah’s gorgeous garden. And not only are the house and grounds stunning, but there’s a trampoline, a ping pong table, a swimming pool next door, and a goofy, friendly German Shepherd who always seemed to be wandering around looking for someone to throw a ball for her. Needless to say, all of this made our stay both full of fun and relaxing, certainly worth making our asses numb from sitting so long on the bus to get down there. In order to repay our gracious hosts for the use of their house and grounds, we proposed that we prepare dinner and dessert on Saturday.

preparations proceed around the bend.