Salt, Salt, Baby!

When I was a kid, my favorite food was anything that had salt on it.  Potatoes especially would get an entire crust of salt before they were 'perfect' to me.  

The worst day of my childhood was the day my dad took the salt shaker off the table and would salt my food separately (I watched and always begged for more). I couldn't believe he felt the need to police me to such a degree. I wanted to call Perry Mason or another TV lawyer to stand up for my rights ... in retrospect, he should have taken the shaker away from me long before my tenth birthday.

Recently, I've cooked for a friend who now has to watch his salt.  While I have given up a lot of sugars (the kind you can easily identify and the stuff that converts to sugar), watching him give up salt broke my heart.  I really and truly feel his pain.

He is the typical bachelor who likes quick, cheap, and easy.  If it takes less than five minutes, he's extremely happy.  Planning ahead - not so much. (My father probably would have taken the salt shaker away from him, too.)



Like most of the rest of the world, I tend to be aware of the things that impact my life.  I am naive, but I had no idea how much salt went into EVERYTHING!  He could easily ingest his new allotment of salt in one meal if it weren't for the labels.

This weekend I was gifted with an entire case of roma tomatoes.  I made almost a gallon of marinara sauce for him (salt free, naturally) and it came out passable.  

Fingers crossed, I'll come up with another case of the red stuff again this weekend ...