I’ve been off nicotine for about a decade now. I replaced traditional tobacco snuff in 2013 while we were living on the corner of Idaho Avenue and 2nd Street in Santa Monica Beach.

I had wanted to quit snuff for some time, but I always fell off the wagon, buying yet another round container of Swedish General or the dreadful American Skoal Bandits.

One evening, while cooking a Thai dish with a generous portion of fresh ginger root from our local Whole Foods, I ate a sizable chunk, chewed on it for a little while, and then instinctively pushed it up my top lip. It burned nicely and I suppose it was then and there that I realized how ginger quite possibly could be the silver bullet, the hero surrogate I so desperately needed to kick the habit and once and for all rid myself of traditional snuff.

A few years later, I made the above short film to show how ridiculously simple it was to create homemade ginger snuff.