Ginger

I've decided you can never really have enough ginger in your diet. Besides being yummy it is also really good for upset tummies and muscle aches (which I've had plenty of since starting to work again). Actually you probably could have too much ginger but I doubt I'm at any risk for that. The problem is that fresh ginger is kind of a pain in the ass, at least I think so. If a recipe calls for a couple teaspoons you have to fish it out, peel it and grate that little bit, only to have to repeat the process the next time you need a little and by my standards that is a pain.

We accidentally stumbled upon a way to avoid this hassle. Mom really likes ginger tea so we started using the food processor to grate whole pieces at a time and then we divide it into tablespoon sized piles which we freeze. This way when mom wants to make a couple cups of tea she can just take one cube of ginger out of the freezer. But it also works great for cooking. The other night I had a recipe that called for fresh grated ginger so I just threw in a couple pieces, still frozen.


It even kind of works for sun tea. Although our usual recipe calls for mint of some kind along with the black tea I wanted to try some with ginger. Using the frozen grated ginger you definitely get some ginger flavor but it's not super strong.


The scary looking stuff floating on top is actually the ginger. It also serves as a good theft deterrent, who would want to steal something that looks like that?

We also tried planting some. We started with a fresh piece (we tried to find one that wasn't too dessicated). This one already had little knobs like it wanted to sprout so we figured it was a good candidate. Here it is in all it's knobbiness:


Look at that knob close up; doesn't it look like a claw?


We cut off pieces and soaked them overnight.


Doesn't it look like a monster's toe floating in there?


The next day we planted them:


We planted three pots and put them in a sunny spot. I can report that a few days later there is some sort of leaf poking up so I think it worked!


I'll let you know if we actually ever get any ginger.