Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

This oozy, gooey, delicious crisp tastes just as much like Summer as the Cucumber, Tomato and Feta salad I made on the weekend. I have walked by fresh rhubarb at the grocery store for weeks now without putting some in the cart. I'm so glad I finally decided to bring some home. I didn't really know what I was going to do with it but that's half the fun. I toyed with making some kind of barbecue sauce or maybe a syrup for a cold drink but then when I was putting away some frozen lemonade I bumped up against a large bag of strawberries from Heeman's I had put in the freezer a couple of weeks ago. So I decided to keep it traditional and go for a crisp.

I used the Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp recipe featured on the Foodland Ontario website for this particular effort. I let the strawberries thaw a bit but basically cut them up frozen. Then I cut up my rhubarb, added it to the strawberries along with some (okay - a lot of) sugar and a little flour and cinnamon. The topping was about as effortless as the fruit base. Some melted butter, flour, oats, brown sugar and cinnamon are mixed together and then spread over the fruit, which is placed in a greased 13x9 baking dish. The ratio of topping to fruit in this recipe is perfect. Sometimes I find a crisp recipe underwhelms me and it's usually because the crisp topping is too thin or too thick. This was Goldilocks good, as in "just right". It presents a bit runny, as you can see above, but that isn't anything that a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream won't help mop up in your bowl. Daniel loved this crisp which I must admit I sold to him as strawberry, period end stop, crisp. David has an aversion to rhubarb so refused to try it and Patrick isn't sold on crisps. So Daniel and I had the delightful task of finishing off the whole 13x9 pan. Which we did. Perfect end to a hot Summer night.