On 8/4/16 4:31 PM, Liz Roberts wrote:
What is your recipe?
It's ad hoc. The first batch, I used water in which I'd
boiled "a field blend of black and mahogany" rice to make an
orzo salad. (I thought rice would be better than orzo.)
This was dark enough to make you think I'd put in a *lot* of
molasses. I used three tablespoons of dried ginger to a
quart, and put the juice of two lemons into a twenty-ounce
bottle. (I've no idea why the American bicycle bottle
standardized on a British pint.) That was way too much, and
the juice of half a lemon was too little, so I use one lemon
per bottle now.
These are small lemons; I cut off and threw away the label
when opening the bag last July, so I don't know what
variety. (I needed one lemon for the fireworks party, and
had to buy a whole bag to get it -- which I didn't mind
because I made some wonderful lemon marmalade last year, but
it turns out that these lemons -- all but one -- keep forever.)
Then I scored a piece of fresh ginger root at Marsh, and
figured I'd make candied ginger and use the
boiling-out-the-bite water for switchel.
I sliced up the ginger for candied ginger and poured honey
over it in the hope that that would preserve it until I got
around to using it. So far that's worked quite well; I take
honey off the ginger to sweeten the switchel (and my
breakfast cereal) and pour more honey in. I boiled one of
the slices with my oatmeal one morning, and changed my mind
about candying it: boiled ginger has a delightful tender,
crisp texture for eating straight -- but it needs to have
more of the bite boiled out.
Then I ground up the trimmings and peels in a pint of water
with a stick blender. Nicely zingy, and I seasoned the
switchel with that until it was gone, then I added a heaping
tablespoon of oatmeal and boiled the ground ginger peels.
This was nearly as zingy as the raw extract, so I strained
it into a quart jar and boiled a second quart of water.
This wasn't quite strong enough, so I booped it up with
first-boiling water: I poured an undetermined amount of
first-boiling into a bottle, added enough second-boiling to
make the bottle about a quarter full, squeezed a lemon into
it and dropped the peel into my bottle of ice water (the
most flavor seems to stay in the pulp), added a teaspoon or
two of ginger honey (which is thin enough to dissolve in a
beverage) and froze it overnight. Just before leaving, I'd
fill the bottle with second-boiling water.
When the second-boiling water was gone, I boiled my
breakfast oatmeal with an extra quart of water, and
continued much the same drill with more first-boiling water,
except that last time I put the spent peel into the oatmeal
water.
And when the first boiling is finally gone, I'll try the
original plan.
Since the idea is to get lots of it inside, judge your
quantities by what tastes good. But go easy on the sweet;
when you are hot and dry, sweet drinks are disgusting; put
in just enough to make it not sour. When my route allows,
I'll fill up the bottle with water-cooler water when it's
about half gone.
Well, that's partly because a basic rule of survival on a
bike is "never carry an empty bottle away from a source of
drinking water". -- Hey! There's my next Aunt Granny
column! Short and to the point. (So I hared off to write
it. Needs a decent subject line, but it will probably hang
around in the buffer for weeks.)
I also carry switchel concentrate in my insulated pannier:
a four-ounce container in which I have frozen ginger water,
the juice of one lemon, and a couple of teaspoons of ginger
honey. I was concerned at first because the containers are
bigger around than the necks of my bottles, but by the time
I've drunk up the first bottle and the bottle of tea, the
ice is soft and easy to break up with my pocket knife. On
yesterday's trip to Mentone, I saved the concentrate for the
trip back, and it had melted entirely. (I should have
carried *two* zipper sandwich bags of ice cubes. (Small
plastic bags pack more efficiently, and the melted ice is
easy to pour out of the corner of the bag into a bottle.))
This is somewhat incoherent, but it's time to weed the
garden. "I'm sorry this letter is so long; I didn't have
time to make it short." (Now I'll spend the rest of the day
wondering who I'm quoting.)
--
Joy Beeson
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.
where we *might* get a little rain this afternoon.
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