So like I was saying, the other night after making that delicious soup and flat bread, I just had to whip up a batch of strawberry rhubarb hand pies for Father’s Day. Pure kitchenry madness ensued.

Of course my husband and I had to sample those pies and so we ended up splitting one. Holy Toledo! The sweetness of the strawberry and sugary filling combined with the tartness of the rhubarb and soft buttery crust sent my taste buds soaring. I couldn’t get those pies out of my mind and seeing them just sitting there continuing to cool atop the stove made me antsy for more:

After confirming my husband had the same itch, we split another…um and then later in the evening after becoming thoroughly zombified on the ‘ole couch, we decided to each have our own WHOLE pie…so I consumed two of these suckers in one evening. If you make these, I recommend spacing out the consumption by at least 8 hours. These are much, much too delicious to get sick on.

The pies were fairly simple to make (uhhh….this batch was), and actually quite fun to do so. I used this recipe with ahem…a few modifications of sorts*; there’s this article about hand pies in The Oregonian that I clipped awhile ago that could also be helpful during concoction. I’m definitely going to make a savory version this fall, hopefully with some home grown butternut squash.

*So the modifications are as follows:

• I made a double batch like she did, but I halved the amount of rhubarb and substituted strawberries…delicious!
• We didn’t have any all-purpose flour in the house, so we used whole wheat bread flour for the dough and I used whole wheat pastry flour in the filling because we ran out of bread flour
• I ended up having extra filling so the next day I made another double batch of pies (!!!) and this time used whole wheat pastry flour for both the crust and the filling. The dough was a bit difficult to work with but that could have been because I substituted some butter for vegetable oil when I ran out of the former. Even after chilling, the dough was just too soft to work with so I just sort of smashed bits of dough around the soupy strawberry/rhubarb filling mixture until it half-way resembled the pies from the night before. This resulted in mass amounts of swearing and repeated trips to the sink before each pie was made to wash my very messy pie hands.
• Half-way through making this new batch of pies I ran out of filling. alsdjflkajsdfljaslkdjfaklsdjf! This resulted in additional swearing. Luckily I had purchased an abundance of strawberries and rhubarb, so I whipped up another batch. This time I was so UNenamored with the whole experience that I didn’t measure anything and just tossed in various amounts of ‘barb, strawberries, flour, sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice. I just wanted to rid myself of the fiasco as quickly as possible, but God forbid I actually toss food out, so onward I baked.
• Once baked and cooled, these bastard pies were actually incredibly delicious. Definitely more of a savory crust and the filling tasted just as good, if not better than the measured filling.

And, um, because I mixed up more filling, I ended up having a whole crap load more of that and now out of butter and sort of sick from all that pie and the whole pie-making experience, I just couldn’t bring myself to make anymore, and so I decided to do what any complete crazed maniac resourceful lass would do and made this:

Strawberry rhubarb sauce! AND DAAAAAANG IS IT GOOD!

I have eaten spoonfuls. Win. I have swirled it in plain yogurt. Double win. Obviously I need to make a trip to Bob’s for more flour (I buy everything in bulk there), and I’m going to replenish my oatmeal supply and try mixing in a spoonful with that next. I also want to use it in lieu of applesauce and make some yummy muffins with it. So in case you’re curious on how to make this amazing stuff, here’s what I did:

1. Whip up a batch of that filling (substitute half the amount of rhubarb with strawberries; you may want to omit the flour or substitute for corn starch if you’re expressly making the sauce. Or omit it entirely. Personally, I like how thick it is)
2. Throw it into a food processor and puree for about 20-30 seconds
3. Pour into a saucepan and bring mixture to a boil
4. Reduce heat and simmer until it cooks down a bit, about 15-20 minutes
5. Allow to cool and spoon into cleaned jam jars (it made four jars)
6. Freeze or refrigerate and enjoy!