I haven’t been posting much lately. Frankly, I haven’t been cooking much lately, either. Our weekends have been busy with races and house guests and travel to celebrate family and friends, and the next two weeks promise more of the same.  The weather here also hasn’t felt particularly summery. OK, that’s not true – last week we had a few days in the 90s, but then it dipped back down to the 60s – so spring has come at last to Ann Arbor, albeit in the middle of June.

The net effect of this is that the first wave of summer cooking and garden bliss hasn’t hit yet. No trips to the u-pick for pounds and pounds of strawberries. No ecstatic first harvests or foraged berries. Just rain. And then heat. And then rain.

We made one of our first trips to the market for the season when Tina was here two weeks ago. It was already bustling with people, though most of the wares were plants rather than produce. I picked up wee zucchini for pre-race pasta, salad greens, eggs, and a bunch of rhubarb, intending to make these muffins for our post race brunch. Instead, the rhubarb sat in the fridge for ten days, getting ever so limp, until the other night, when I chopped it up and simmered it with water and sugar to make this intensely pink syrup for cocktails and Italian sodas. The pulpy leftovers will be spread on toast and spooned over yogurt as a rustic jam. Good stuff, and a good reminder that summer really is here. Well, kind of.

Recipe:
Rhubarb syrup from The Kitchn