A rhubarb recipe and a sale to celebrate 10,000 subscribers
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Hello from the half of me that is so excited to send today’s jam-packed newsletter and also from the half of me that is hanging my head in shame at the fact that I haven’t sent out a newsletter in almost three weeks. We both live here.
First, a neat milestone: There are now more than 10,000 of you here(!!) I first started writing Gentle Foods a little under a year ago, and seeing how many of you have since chosen to opt in to this corner of the internet has been incredibly gratifying. And bunch of you are brand-new here, thanks to this essay I wrote on breaking up with perfectionist cooking that was featured on last weekend’s edition of
. (That essay will remain free to read until Saturday, when it will go back behind the paywall.)
With all the new folks here, I figured now might be a good time to reiterate what this newsletter is all about.
Gentle Foods is a space for people who are learning to better care for themselves through food.
We like to cook, but not all the time. We don’t count calories. We’re learning to divorce ourselves from the binary of “good” and “bad” foods and instead accept that foods do not have moral value. We care about health (and believe that “health” looks different for everyone) but are skeptical of “wellness.” We’re learning to meet ourselves with curiosity and compassion in the kitchen, not just on the good days but especially on the bad days. We celebrate the ways that small wins in the kitchen help make more of the world feel possible. If any of this resonates with you, welcome. It’s nice here.
To celebrate reaching 10,000 subscribers, paid subscriptions are 20 percent off right now:
That’s $56/year (or $5.60 a month) instead of $70/year—click here for the discount. This will be on offer for the next week, with my sincerest thanks!
Why pay? As a full-time freelancer, this newsletter is my steadiest-paying gig, which is gratifying but also a little scary. Reader subscriptions are the number-one way for me to keep this work sustainable. Your money affords me time and space to write the essays you come here for. It also allows me to invest time and resources into shopping for, developing, researching, writing, and editing trustworthy recipes. Finally, paid subscribers help subsidize comped subscriptions for folks who need them (more on that below), so I can keep this work accessible. Paid subscribers also get more content and commenting privileges.
Here are some nice things paid subscribers have to say about this newsletter:
"I love your writing, your recipes, your cooking style, your musings, I really enjoy it all. I have been an intuitive eating enthusiast for a few years now and I find I relate a lot to how you approach being a food person <3 "
"Your thoughtful way of approaching eating resonates with me, as someone who loves to cook and eat but also has struggled with disordered eating. Thank you for your transparency!”
"Christina takes care of her readers like I hope she takes care of herself. Wonderful to read!"
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(P.S. I read and cherish every paid subscriber note and revisit them whenever I need an instant dopamine hit. You guys are the best.)
And as always: If a paid subscription is not something you can do right now, email me at gentlefoods@substack.com and I’ll set you up, no reason needed, no questions asked.
What happens here?
I typically send out a weekly essay and/or recipe. Here are some of my most popular essays from the past year. They’ll give you a sense of the recurring topics that I write about through the lens of food, which include mental health, diet culture, and perfectionism:
“Recipe?”
Yes, I also publish recipes! You can find all of them here and at the top of my homepage under the “Recipe Index” tab.
Speaking of recipes…
I have a short one for you today, for a delightful five-minute rhubarb compote. It’s juicy, tart, sweet, and the most gorgeous hot pink color. It’s officially woo-bob season in New York, and the long-awaited sight of these scarlet stalks at the markets fills my heart.
Rhubarb is not hard to cook, but it can be a bit temperamental. It cooks very quickly, and if it’s even a little overcooked it has the tendency to look and taste a bit drab. For the most vibrantly flavored and colored compote, use the reddest stalks you can find and simmer the fruit just until the rhubarb starts to soften; you’ll have to prod a piece with your spatula to know when that is, because the rhubarb remains deceptively shapely looking until, all of a sudden, it’s brown mush.
I’ve been using this compote to make fruit-on-the-bottom cups of chia pudding (hello, 2013!) that I might share the full recipe for in a future newsletter. But, as you might expect, it’s also excellent over yogurt or cottage cheese, on ricotta toast, oatmeal, etc. I’m going to try dolloping them into some breakfast-y muffins with buckwheat and lightly sweetened cream cheese—will hopefully report back with a recipe soon.
Five-Minute Rhubarb Compote
Makes about 1 cup
Ingredients
2 cups thinly sliced rhubarb, from about 8 oz. or 3-4 medium stalks
Zest and juice from ½ navel orange (about 3 Tbsp. juice)
¼ cup granulated sugar
Preparation
Combine rhubarb, orange zest and juice, and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring with a heatproof spatula to dissolve sugar. Once rhubarb comes to a simmer, stop stirring, reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, and partially cover. Cook, stirring gently once, just until rhubarb starts to soften but still retains its shape, about 3 minutes. Immediately transfer compote to a heatproof bowl or container and let cool; it will become thicker and brighter pink as it sits.
Enjoy compote in a bowl of yogurt or cottage cheese with granola, oatmeal, on ricotta toast, pancakes, etc.—you know what to do.
Do ahead: Compote can be made up to 5 days ahead. Cover and chill.
+ 3 more rhubarb recipes for your springtime cooking and baking pleasure:
Rhubarb shrub - A fun little spring project: Macerate rhubarb and sugar, add vinegar, and let it all hang out until it become a hot pink tart-sweet syrup that is wildly delicious topped with club soda or mixed into cocktails.
Rhubarb galette - I’ve been using Briana Holt’s recipe for years and it never fails me. The creamy frangipane that’s spread on the dough before you pile on the juicy rhubarb calls for hazelnuts, buckwheat flour, and rye whiskey and you know what? WORTH IT. What else would you expect from Tandem Bakery’s preeminent baker?
Rhubarb custard crumble cake - This wet cake (imo A GOOD THING!) by
of has been an open tab in my mind since it was first published three years ago. I mean, just look at it!!!See you all here next week!
—Chaey
Love rhubarb, thanks for this!
Also last spring you had a recipe for a rhubarb shrub and mentioned the pickled rhubarb might be good in chicken salad--I put it into tuna salad, and it was very excellent, so thank you for the recipe and the suggestion!
impossible for me not to call it woo-bob now, god I love its fleeting season!