The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth

Last night we had the season's first meal from our garden. Main dish: Sorrel Soup, with a salad partly composed of lettuce and arugula from our garden, and for dessert Rhubarb Sponge Pudding.

The sorrel we grow in our garden is wood sorrel, which has a pretty trefoil leaf and is considered the premium for flavor.  There is another kind of sorrel, from an entirely different family, called field sorrel. It grows wild around here and is supposed to be very nice, too. It has a sort of soury taste - a bit lemony.

Later in the season we will have radish leaf soup, which is made the same way.  We could have nettle soup - same recipe - but we have never tried it.  You can add any green at all, including lettuce to the soup.  I'll post the recipe separately.

The salad was also from our garden, except for the part which was from  our grocery store.  In the spirit of honest disclosure, only a small part of the salad was from our garden, but by next week we should be able to have regular salads of our own mesclun. 

And the dessert - rhubarb season is upon us and I'm so pleased.  I love rhubarb. The recipe, which I'll post separately, is English and is also dead easy. It's our favorite way of preparing rhubarb. Though my rhubarb crisp with ginger, is also very nice and almost as easy.