Death to Ginger!

When I was in second grade, I had a hamster named Dicey (his repeated attempts to climb the water bottle to safety resulted in falling and tumbling along the cage in a way that reminded me of Parcheesi dice*). The thing about Dicey was, well, there were lots of things about Dicey, though  given that this is basically a food blog I feel the need to quell any rising  unease that this story is going to end with Dicey making the acquaintance of my Easy Bake Oven in any alarming kind of way. He does not. What he does do--did--was stink.

I don't mean he was a bad hamster--penchant for escape attempts aside, he stuffed his cheeks with lettuce and toddled around in a way that brought me hours of glee. But that tiny sucker pissed like he was trying to swim free, and it was my unhappy chore to clean the cage. I thought that Dicey's untimely death in fourth grade put an end to the sourly pungent torture of the smell piss-soaked shavings for good, but then I caught a whiff of ginger.

Uncapping that first ginger jar unleashed an exact scent replica of those terrible, terrible shavings. You would think that if the smell of a spice most of the world loves reminds me of the smell of Dicey's dirty cage, then logically the smell said cage could never have been as bad as I remembered it in the first place. But my sense of smell does not follow your stinking (ha!) logic!

I'm trying to reprogram my irrational ginger revulsion, I really am. And I've had some success with Indian cooking, in no small part because the other spices--BURNING!--mean I can't taste the ginger at all. But I just made a carrot soup recipe that included the heinous herb, and I  thought, be an adult, Lady Married With Veggies. There's allspice in there to dull the ginger, so maybe this is the ginger gateway you've been hoping for, but alas no. I probably should have paid attention when my stomach flipped as I opened the jar and caught a whiff--Dicey, is that you?--but I pushed through and tried the soup, and....hamster piss.

Total hamster piss.

Some quick thinking and a shit ton of cinnamon and salt later, and the soup was saved, but the conversion to all things ginger I was hoping for? Just not meant to be, I'm afraid.

Thanks for nothing, Dicey.

*I like to think the more mature writer I am now has a bit more flare for metaphorical thinking.