If this were a Facebook status update, it would say "Andrea is rhubarb tart and Hello Saferide"

Ever since I saw bright pink stalks of rhubarb arrayed on a table in Borough Market, I've been wanting to make something rhubarb-y. Apparently the rhu doesn't go with strawberries in Old Blighty -- for reasons that remain unclear to me -- and so taking this to heart, I was thinking that I'd make something just with rhubarb. Unadulterated, tart, etc. When I arrived back to my apartment in Chicago about two weeks ago, I had three sorts of mail, more or less: bills, academic publishing catalogues, and cooking magazines. (What this says about me I'd rather not consider, but there you go.) In the April issue of Gourmet, there was a quick recipe for rhubarb tart. It's a bit like tarte tatin, in that you slice the rhubarb wafer thin and lay it flat, overlapping a bit, on the pastry. After you bake it you glaze it with a reduced orange glaze. The results are pretty spectacular, and they actually taste like rhubarb, which made me realize that I didn't know, until now, what rhubarb tastes like. A bit like a tart apple with an unidentifiable punch. And pink, to boot!

The other thing that I feel like evangelizing about is my new favorite album. I was listening to it all day yesterday, and my neighbors are probably ready to take their broom handles to the ceiling (in fairness, it was only my old neighbors who did that; these neighbors are perfectly nice). It's called "More modern short stories from Hello Saferide." It's not quite out here, I don't think -- I bought it at a record store in Berlin called Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free -- but it's the best thing I've heard in a long time. Have a listen!