A summer's breakfast in the depth of winter

This reluctant landlubber was having to concede the other day that dirt can produce magic things. Of course, it struggles to match sensible products like flying fish and octopuses and whales, but – to give it its due – it doesn't do too badly with vegetables and a few other aspects of life.

I was going overboard for a vegetable, or is it a fruit – either way it's very useful – about the relative magic of rhubarb. Naturally, there is no comparison with the joys of seaweed and kelp and, well, phytoplankton, but it is great stuff.

At the time, I was about to breakfast on rhubarb which grows in my garden like weeds, as landlubbers will term it.

If it grows like weeds, though, could it really be good for health? Good old Captain Google had the answer.

Full of magic

The search engine directed me in a fiftieth of a second to about six zillion sites including Nutrition Data.

This site revealed that rhubarb 'is low in Saturated Fat and Sodium, and very low in Cholesterol.

'It is also a good source of Magnesium, and a very good source of Dietary Fibre, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Calcium, Potassium and Manganese.' Perhaps it should have an accompaniment, I thought. Of course, the democrat heart on this side of the keyboard should never have done it, but I followed a nod from the Telegraph website.

Sarah Knapton the paper's science correspondent wrote of the amazing goodness of porridge.

The rest, as they say, is history, though a rather messy history, I have to report, and did.

The rhubarb brought boundless exuberant health – even if I didn't quite notice it at the time. … Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com