TracyFood

Wednesday weirdness: ginger condensation? 19 May 2010 1:44 pm

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,ingredients,photos,random,silly,weird , trackback

So yesterday, as planned in the end of my last post, I made a batch of Tracy granola, and noticed something weird when I measured out the ginger, from this jar here:

Just the standard Fairway-brand ground ginger, see?

But what’s that on the inside of the lid there? What is it?

I don’t know, but there it is again.

Whatever it is, it’s sticky and tastes like ginger and is now coated in a fine layer of ground ginger powder after I shook the jar. Readers, have any of you seen anything like this in any of your spices? I was totally perplexed! The ginger still tastes fine, and the granola turned out great, but… so weird. Or am I weird for never having spotted anything like this before? Am I only just now becoming aware to the degree that my spices have been conspiring behind my back ALL THIS TIME? Ok, even I know that’s just silly. Now it’s off to the NYPL and NYU libraries I go, to return books used for the mess I sorta-finished Saturday, and trade them in for shiny new things to read, yay!

Michal Young

Hmmm … when I work with fresh ginger, one of the things that impresses me is how much water it contains. Make a few slices of fresh ginger and put them in a small bowl of sugar, and the ginger will give off enough liquid to melt a whole bunch of sugar. So it isn't completely surprising that there would be some residual moisture in (dried?) ground ginger, and that it might condense on the lid. And if there is enough fine powdered ginger in there, I can imagine the drops would re-absorb ginger and become sticky and gingery.