What To Do With All That Rhubarb?

I came to the sudden realization today, that I haven't done anything with the rhubarb growing in our backyard yet this year!  We've only been growing it for the past couple of years, and my rhubarb recipes to date have been limited to ONE.  Unfortunately, our rhubarb stalks were quite spindly this year, but that didn't stop me from trying out a new recipe!  I wish I had taken a picture of the end result, but by the time I thought of it, the confection had been reduced to mere crumbs by my family.

Alas, here's the recipe that we tried, and LOVED!

Rhubarb Bars

Ingredients:
1 c. flour
1/3 c. powdered sugar
1/3 c. butter

Filling:

1 c. sugar
1/4 c. flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
3 c. finely chopped fresh or frozen rhubarb

Procedure:
Combine flour & powdered sugar; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Press into the bottom of a greased 11-inch x 7-inch x 2-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. For filling, combine first four ingredients. Stir in rhubarb; pour over warm crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack. Serve warm if desired. Store in refrigerator.


My family LOVED this recipe!

Debt Accountability - Our Debt as of August 1, 2013

What better way to force myself to face our debt head on, than to expose my debts to the world? So, now you, my friends, and anyone who may have stumbled upon this blog will know what our current debt situation looks like, and ideally will be able to track the progress we make in paying off our debts. At this point, we have the following debts that we are working to payoff:

Group A:
A Student Loan
Credit Card 1
Credit Card 2
Home Equity Loan
Car loan

Group B:
Land Payment (Will be paid in full in September 2013)
Mortgage

For this exercise, I'll only be focusing on our debts in Group A. Our goal is to payoff our smaller debts in Group A, after which we'll then focus on reducing the debts in Group B. Since our land payment will be paid in full in September, the only item that will be remaining in Group B will be our mortgage. Our mortgage is set up as an automatic payment, and we've already included additional funds towards that every month. As other debts are paid off, we'd like to increase the amount of extra payments that we are making towards our mortgage.

Confession time... The value of the debts in Group A, as of August 1, 2013 is ($24,531.17)

Due to the fact that the credit cards have the highest interest rates of any of the debts listed in Group A, we'll be focusing on paying those off first while making the regular payments on the remaining debts in the list.