The rhubarb patch was getting overgrown – again – and I was stuck at home due to car repairs. What’s the connection, you might ask, and my family and close friends and regular readers would say, “Doh!”

I might add that the weather was wet, wet, and more wet, so I wasn’t likely to spend any time in the garden temporarily known as the Okay By Me Swamp. That brought me back to the kitchen and (full circle) the rhubarb.

I baked cookies. We now have rhubarb cookies, delicious and sweet, and a little more room in the rhubarb patch. A little, I said. I only harvested what I needed for one cup. There’s plenty left in the patch. For your enjoyment, here’s the recipe, slightly modified from the one I found on All Recipes dot com.

Rhubarb Drop cookies

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 cup rhubarb, chopped thin

1/2 cup raisins

3 Tablespoons flax seeds

1. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside. Mix the raisins into this mixture until well coated to keep the raisins from clumping.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter and egg until smooth. Beat egg into batter. Stir in the rhubarb.  Mix flour mixture into the wet ingredients just until combined. Sprinkle with flax seeds; stir one more time.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough onto ungreased baking sheets. Optional: use a fork coated with sugar to flatten cookies slightly. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes. Cool on the pan for a few minutes before moving to wire rack.

Serve with coffee, of course.

And then, after you sample the fresh cookies, take the rhubarb leaves out to the compost along with the eggshell and coffee grounds. After all, compost is what happens, and what happens is all natural and good.