It is purely by coincidence that the day I cleaned out my freezer and discovered no fewer than 5 bags of frozen chopped rhubarb I had squirreled away last summer was the very same day I noticed the first few shoots of rhubarb poking out of the ground.

I didn’t have the gumption to bake a pie, and there was at least 5 pies’ worth of rhubarb there anyway. So I stirred some into muffins; a recipe from Nigella’s Feast that she credits to Bev Laing of Edmonton, and the rest I dumped into a pot with the better part of a bag of frozen cranberries, some sugar and a spoonful of orange juice concentrate, and cooked it into cranberry-rhubarb sauce. (Or compote, if you want to be fancy about it.) I mean, why not? Both are red and tart; it’s like they were meant for each other.

I had a thawed pork tenderloin that needed cooking, so I rubbed it down with a bit of cumin, paprika, brown sugar, salt and pepper, then a little oil, and grilled it. I didn’t really care what I did to it; the pork was a mere vehicle for the sauce. While it grilled (or vice versa) I boiled some brown and wild rice the way I’d cook pasta – in lots of water – for about 45 minutes, and threw in some thawed frozen peas for the last 5 minutes. (W will eat rice, and rice with stuff in it, but the peas cannot stand alone.) A great fiber combo – brown and wild rice are of course good sources of fiber, but peas are even better, containing about 4 times as much as the rice.

The leftover sauce went into a bowl with some plain yogurt, oats, raisins and the grated remains of W’s half-eaten apple, and was stirred together to make muesli for breakfast and to dip into for the rest of the week. (The oats will absorb the moisture overnight, making it nice and thick.)