Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

Rhubarb is one of those foods that defies classification - although cooked in pies and made into sauces like a fruit, it is actually a vegetable (leaf stalks, or petioles, to be exact). It's also the kind of food that, according to Garrison Keillor, isn't grown anywhere else except for here (here being wherever you happen to be) and which, when baked into a pie, can really revive a guy. My mom always kept a patch of rhubarb in the backyard while I was growing up, and back then the flow of rhubarb seemed endless. Then I moved out into the real world, and my rhubarb supply dried up. Occasionally, I'd find frozen rhubarb at the grocery store, or a stand at the farmers' market might have some. Grocery stores occasionally have it in the fresh produce section, but usually at exorbitant prices ($3.50 - $4 / pound). Then yesterday I found some really nice stalks in the corner of the grocery store - and on sale, too! As it happened, I also had about a half carton of strawberries in my refrigerator that really needed to be used up - and voila! I had the makings for an early summer strawberry-rhubarb pie.

The nice thing about strawberry-rhubarb pie is that you can adjust the ratio of strawberries to rhubarb and the amount of sugar / sweetener you put in, depending on how much of each you have available and how sweet you like your pie. For the pie I made last night, I used 2 cups of strawberries to 4 cups of rhubarb. If you prefer your rhubarb unadulterated, you can cut the strawberries out entirely - although you might want to up the sugar content a bit to offset the rhubarb's sharp taste.

Strawberry - Rhubarb Pie (8 servings)
2 pie crusts (store-bought or homemade)
1/2 cup sugar (or 12 packets no-calorie sweetener + 1/4 cup sugar)
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
dash ground nutmeg
6 cups sliced strawberries + rhubarb (2 cups strawberries + 4 cups rhubarb is a good place to start)

1. Pre-heat oven to 375F.

2. Line a 9 inch pie plate with one of the crusts and trim to edge of pie plate.

3. Stir together sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Add strawberries and rhubarb and toss until well-coated.

4. Pour strawberry - rhubarb mixture into pie plate, place second crust, fold edges under bottom crust and seal edge of pie. Cut vents in top crust.

5. Bake 50 minutes. If desired, place foil around edge of pie to protect crust during the first 25 minutes of baking. Cool pie on a wire rack after removing from oven.

6. Slice and serve pie - top with vanilla ice cream if desired!