Easy Peasy Spring Rhubarb Sauce

Another reason I love spring is
RHUBARB!
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This is an easy recipe to help you use your rhubarb. If you don't grow your own, pick some up at your local farmer's market.

Here's what you do to make this easy, peasy spring rhubarb sauce.


1) Cut a bunch of rhubarb from the garden or buy some from your Farmer's Market.



















2) Slice the rhubarb into bite sized pieces and place in a microwaveable dish or bowl. I always cover mine when I cook it.




















3) Cook, covered, in micorwave for, approximately, 5 minutes on high.
You'll know the rhubarb is done when it's soft and liquidy. (I have found that I don't even need to add water.)

















4) Since I don't use sugar, I add Splenda at this point. (If you use sugar, I can only assume that you would add the sugar to taste before you cook the rhubarb.) I add Splenda until I like the taste.



See what I mean? Easy, peasy!

Let's make broken pieces of glass--aka--shards, a mini tutorial.

I have become a shards junkie. I love to use shards on beads! If you have read some of past blogs, you've seen some of my beads that have shards. I truly love using them when working with glass. If you are a non-glass person, you might ask, "What are shards?" Simply put, shards are thin, broken pieces of glass. Shards are used to apply decoration and/or texture to molten glass beads. All right, next question, how do you make shards? The answer is: very easily with only one tool.

The tool you need is a hollow mandrel. You can see that mine is well used.



















The next step is to melt glass on the uncoated mandrel. The color choice(s) are yours. You can make shards in as many different colors as you like. You can add left over stringers, twisties, enamels, silver foil, silver foil, frit or all of the above.


















This is a picture of a molten blob of glass at the end of the mandrel before I blow the glass.



















Here I am beginning to blow into the other end of the hollow mandrel. The glass is beginning to expand.


















Look how big that little blog became. In actuality, it's a little bit too big, but for the sake of this tutorial, it's just fine. Yeah, right.

















I let the shard ball cool in a small aluminum pan that I use only for glass. In this photo, the mandrel is still attached. As it cools, the mandrel just breaks off at the edge. If, for some reason, the mandrel doesn't come off, I simply tap the mandrel, and the glass shard breaks off.

















This is the final product--the shards. At this point, I break them. I usually just use my hands. On thicker shards, I guard my hands carefully and use a small hammer. After that, I use the shards in my beads.

For those who prefer not to make their own shards, there are many wonderful suppliers of shards. Google to find the suppliers or enjoy making your own.

Have Some Fun! Build a Terrarium!

Way back in the '60's, when there were flower children and environmentalists started to teach us about clean air, I made my first terrarium. Actually, my husband and I built it together. Somehow, he managed to acquire a large, glass, water holder. I remember we were both so excited about this terrarium we were going to build. We bought special tools that helped us to plant the plants and to take care of them. We added our soil and water, then, slowly but surely, we added our delicate little plants. I think they lived for about a month before they drowned in our over enthusiastic watering. It seemed that we were both watering the plants at different times, and we didn't realize it until the poor plants had drowned. At that point we both said, "Oh well," and handed off our terrarium to some friends who were as excited as we had been about helping to improve the environment. The other night as I window shopped ETSY, I came across a store that had terrariums for sale. The store owner placed moss in a jar, along with soil and gravel, and sold the product. I had been thinking that it would be nice to have some small plants in my torching area to help improve the air quality. I also realized that I should bring down my aloe plant to help with the many burns I seem to get when glass explodes as I make beads. I thought I would buy one of these terrariums until I saw the price. I felt that they were very expensive for what was being used, and the price did not include the shipping. That was very expensive, too. As I looked around my house, I saw the old canning jars that I don't use any more. I knew I had soil. I thought I had some moss growing in my garden. It turned out that I didn't have the moss, so back to square one. I just couldn't justify the cost of the terrarium that I had found since I had all the ingredients except for the moss. The next morning, I called a couple of local florists. One of them knew exactly what I needed. It was what she called Green Moss. She said if you wet it and kept it moist, it would grow. She saved me some, and off I went to buy it. It cost me less than $3, and when I was finished I had made 4 terrariums and had plenty of moss left over for more. Now, I hope to have a bit more clean air when I torch, and even if I don't I love my terrariums!