Rhubarb Incident

Son1 made a wonderful Rhubarb/Mixed Berry pie on Saturday. It was delicious from what I've been told. It wasn't gluten free... so none for me!

Vet2Be thought it was soooooo good that he had about 1/3 of the pie. Big mistake!

He hadn't had very much to drink on Sunday, and with all the rhubarb in that pie, it made him a little sick. While we were out milking he felt a little weak and had to sit down. He felt a little light headed. And he felt some odd sensations in his throat. We weren't sure what was going on, maybe he was getting sick again.

But then we remembered just how much pie he had eaten!

I knew that the leaves of the rhubarb plant aren't edible. I trimmed those off when I froze the rhubarb. But after reading more about rhubarb we found that the leaves should be trimmed off immediately.

Tuck that piece of information away for future reference! It would have been very easy to trim the leaves while we were harvesting the rhubarb!

Here's a link that Hubby found for rhubarb: The Rhubarb Compendium If you like chemistry and science, this is a great page because it goes into some of the chemical processes that occur when you eat oxalic acid.

Without going into the chemistry behind what happens with the body and oxalic acid, I can tell you that Hubby decided that Vet2Be had better drink a whole lot of lemonade (we make it with Real Lemon juice) because the citric acid in the lemon juice would somehow combine with the calcium in the body instead of the oxalic acid combining with the calcium. I don't get it! I'm not a chemist.

I asked if it would be better if we added some citric acid to the lemonade. We always have citric acid around here. I use it in cheesemaking, Hubby uses it in some of his processes.

I added 1 teaspoon of citric acid to a gallon of lemonade.... wow! That tastes great!  Hubby had Vet2Be drink about 32 ounces of Lemon-ade and he felt better within 30 minutes.

I don't know if this would be considered a cure for too much rhubarb or too much oxalic acid, but it helped Vet2Be. And we love the new taste of the lemonade with citric acid added!

It also reminded me how much I love being married to a chemist. I'm not sure even the doctors would have been able to come up with something as simple as lemonade!