As mentioned in earlier posts, I’ve been trying to eat a little healthier recently and have even cut back on my frozen pizza roll consumption. Completely giving up these magnificent flavor bombs is my Mt. Everest. Something I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do, let alone survive the ascent to the summit. But I know they’re horrible for me and that, if I want to live to see my grandchildren become professional gamers, complete with multi-million dollar signing bonuses and thus, sending me into earlier retirement, well... I gotta kick the habit.
My wife and I somehow convinced the mini Wookiees in our house to join this health undertaking. The kids had a Mardi Gras of sorts, inviting friends over for a sleepover and they were given free rein on all the junk food in the house as a final purge of the cabinets, fridge, and freezer. They knew going into this gluttonous night that things would be very different afterward. They did their job and paid the price. Each of them was extremely sick the next day.
And so it began. We began cooking a lot of meals that were foreign to our family. Foods that consisted of all-natural, minimally processed wonders. Flavor had departed, if for a moment. After a month of this, we all started noticing a positive change in our overall health. Allergies lessened. Back pain gone. Headaches much more sporadic. And each of us had a ton more energy. We also began to notice flavors in the very same meals we started this health kick with that we didn’t notice at the onset. Yes, that was in part due to the healthy lifestyle, giving our once inundated taste buds a chance to regroup. But an unsung hero also showed itself. It was NaCl or, as your non-science folk might refer to it, salt.
During one of our meals, eating chickpeas or lentils or something weird, I noticed that even the slightest bit of added salt completely altered the flavor complexity of the concoction. This wonder ingredient brought out each of the missing flavors, working in some sort of a symbiotic manner, so mysterious to even the greatest thinkers and scientists of our time, that many choose not to weigh in on such a controversial subject. And it didn’t take much of this miraculous element to make this rabbit food edible. It can even make some fruit taste better. Add to that the millions of other uses for this component of the cosmos. Making hard water soft. Making a slippery sidewalk safe. Emulsification in manufacturing. Preservation. Even Sanitation.
I will no longer take this mineral for granted. Salt is magical.
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