209 Parkway Avenue N. • Lanesboro, MN 55949 • (507) 467-2577
It isn't Spring in Lanesboro, Minnesota, without fresh picked rhubarb in the kitchen. If you are a native of the upper Midwest, you may have those vivid memories of pulling a rhubarb stalk out of the ground and biting into that sour suprise. Perhaps you even snuck some sugar out of the house to dip that rhubarb stalk into before taking a bite. Lanesboro wants to help you relive those childhood memories and develop even more appreciation for this famous vegetable at the town's annual Rhubarb Festival. Every year, Lanesboro hosts the Rhubarb Festival on the first Saturday of June complete with a rhubarb food contest with taste testing, rhubarb games, the largest rhubarb leaf contest, music from the Rhubarb Sisters, and much more. This year, Rhubarb Festival will be held on Saturday, June 5, in Sylvan Park, and while the event is adapted and will have no taste testing, there will still be plenty of fun ways to enjoy and celebrate this quirky plant.
The Cottage House featured rhubarb over the years when former Innkeepers, Waldo and Marilyn Bunge, added homemade rhubarb sauce and raspberry-rhubarb jam to the breakfast line up. Buttermilk pancakes and rhubarb sauce is a combination you definitely want to try one day. Marilyn is famous for making her rhubarb punch for various celebrations (find the recipe in this year's Lanesboro Visitor Guide), and rhubarb pies were made for many years to support the Sons of Norway who sells pies at the Rhubarb Festival. Although there is no food at this year's Rhubarb Festival, we look forward to the Cottage House kitchen once again being a rhubarb pie factory, hopefully in 2022.
Now I better get back to the kitchen because I need to make some rhubarb punch and raise a glass to Lanesboro's favorite plant. Thank you, rhubarb, for popping up every spring and reminding us of childhood memories and all the fun recipes we can try!
