Friday, April 22, 2011

Turmeric

From the NYtimes article on the Ganges in Queens:

"Ricky Kanhai and his wife, Asha, both 28, visited the beach last Sunday to pray that they would soon have a child. Mr. Kanhai waded into the water and poured jugs of milk, dyed pink with turmeric, into the sea foam."

And that's my last article for this month. I maxed out Vince's computer, then my new one, with a stint on another laptop, so my twenty article limit kind of stretched. Anyhow, that's the last for this month.

Will someone please tell Sam Dolnick that turmeric is yellow?

Not pink. Pink turmeric would be like...I dunno. Green tar. Blue milk. Red snow. Yellow bluebells. Black cherry blossoms.  Purple peas. Grey bourbon. Orange blackbirds.

4 comments:

  1. Pink was the word that leapt out at me and I think I said something like "twit!"

    So...where do you get your fix now!;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The spice is made from the rhizome (which is bright orange/yellow) but the prayer ceremony uses the leaves. I don't know what color the leaves would yield, but the flowers are in the hot pink/fuchsia/magenta family.

    Speaking through my copy editor hat and having had a look at the photo, I think I'd have advocated for deleting the color reference.

    ReplyDelete
  3. dinahmow, I don't, I just get more work done!

    melanie, I know, that worried me, so I looked up to see whether you could get pink from raw turmeric or the flowers and no reference....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Marie -- regarding the pink turmeric ... I think the milk might have been mixed not only with turmeric rhizome (which would never produce a pink color) but also with kumkum (vermilion) powder, which could account for the pink color. Just a guess.

    Keli'i

    ReplyDelete

Comments on posts older than 48 hours are moderated (for spam control) . Yours will be seen! Unless you are a troll. Serial trollers are banned.