“Do we have any raisins?” said Kiddo#3.
Because I shop at BJs, we have some raisins. I think we have five pounds of raisins in a resealable bag, glowering at me from the back of the fridge. I have very few food aversions. One of them is raisins.
My Patient Husband said yes, we had some. Did he want to eat them?
Not exactly. Kiddo#3 said, “I want to fill a glass with water and put some raisins inside to see what happens.”
My first thought was that the raisins would get soggy and disgusting (more disgusting than I usually find them) and my second thought was, “Are you trying to turn them back into grapes?”
He beamed: it was the perfect idea. Since I wasn’t buying grapes (as it’s December) he would reconstitute some grapes from the bag of raisins. Grapes are expensive. Raisins are cheap. And since raisins are just dried grapes, the whole process was easily-reversible.
Kiddo#2 said, “I don’t think it will happen that way.”
I said, “Actually, this is the scientific method. Kiddo#3 has a hypothesis: that you can turn a raisin back into a grape by replacing the water. The next step is to test the hypothesis by soaking a raisin in a cup of water.”
After dinner, I walked into the kitchen and found on the counter a clear plastic glass full of water, with four raisins at the bottom.
We do not, alas, have a bunch of grapes this morning. I haven’t included a photo of the results because I like you guys, but the experiment turned out the way I thought it would. (Dried raisin skins do not expand the way growing grape skins do.)
But Kiddo#3, as always, is undisappointed by the failure of his hypothesis to…er…bear fruit. Of all the kiddos in this de-vine bunch, he’s the least likely to w(h)ine.
Whenever I hear about rehydrating raisins, I think of Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl. Highly recommended, especially for the scene in the woods after the raisins are rehydrated.
While you are doing raising experiments, try this:
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/homeexpts/dancingraisins.htm
You could ask them what they think will happen before you do it.
I once cooked oatmeal and added raisins while it was cooking. I made more than I wanted to eat at once sitting. The next day when eating the re-warmed oatmeal and raisins I found that the raisins had expanded somewhat, and it was more like eating oatmeal and small grapes than oatmeal and raisins.