Not even a month ago I converted nearly 10 pounds (4.5kg) of ginger into fermented ginger. My thought back on February 25th was that I was making enough to last a year, but here we are not even 30 days later and we have already used more than half of what I had prepared. Today I was able to recruit Caroline to help peel the ginger while I went to work slicing it into thin pieces roughly the size of matchsticks.

It’s now two hours later from when we started and while all 10 pounds of fresh ginger has been peeled, I’m not even halfway through slicing it. Even if I wanted to be satisfied with only dealing with half of it today, I can’t because I need to get this finished and put it into jars. The next tough part of the process is pressing the water out of the salted ginger, rinsing, and squeezing until I’m ready to let it sit out overnight in lime juice and more salt before placing it in jars and covering it in oil. Such is the work required for enjoying one of life’s rare luxuries.