Recipe: Candied Ginger

I'm a bit down by the fact that some of my tomato plants appear to be succumbing too the over watering by nature recently (although I watered one plant thinking that perhaps my recent lack of watering to help them dry out is the issue). At any rate, I decided to take the left over ginger in the fridge and candy it. I found a pretty easy recipe online on about.com but I'll regurgitate it here for convenience, and I didn't follow the recipe exact, so sue me.

First and foremost, this candy recipe doesn't require a thermometer, how cool is that?

Ingredients:

• Fresh ginger (any amount will due, I used the left overs from a 4 oz. package)
• Sugar (the amount will vary based on the ginger used, see below)
• Water

Directions:

1. Peel and cut the ginger into thin slices
2. Place the ginger in a pot, and cover with water
3. Lightly boil the ginger until tender, took about 45 minutes for me to be pleased with the tenderness
4. Drain and dry (lightly pat, I placed mine in a paper towel and squeezed lightly)
5. Weigh the ginger
6. Add the ginger and an equal weight of sugar back to the pot (mine was just over an ounce)
7. Add a few tablespoons of water (the original recipe said 3, and that's what I did, but it seemed like a bit much considering the recipe was for 16 ounces of fresh ginger)
8. Bring the pot back to a point stirring every once in a while. Keep boiling until most of the water is evaporated
9. Reduce heat and keep stirring, the mixture will eventually get very dry
10. Dump the ginger out and separate (I used wax paper)
11. The original recipe said to toss the cooled ginger in sugar. I skipped this step as there was a good amount of excess sugar in the pot / stuck to the ginger
12. Let it cool and enjoy!

Super simple and very yummy, sweetness paired with the spice / bite of the ginger. I may end up eating it all before my wife gets home from the book store ;)