I’m
not going to write about my crumbling edifice except to say that for three
weeks I’ve been focused on a spine issue that has puzzled, distressed, and
exhausted me. My life has been a blur of sleeplessness and visits to doctors,
chiropractor, acupuncturist, and the LMH emergency room.
One
thing I’ve learned, incidentally, from this nightmare is that my blood levels
of chloride and sodium are low. These are electrolytes, for Pete’s sake, and
the body’s intricate electrical (nervous) system needs them to run smoothly.
Fifty
years ago my mom had to give up salt in her diet for medical reasons. Watching
her distress over unappetizing, unsalted food, I decided right then to reduce
by half the amount of salt called for in recipes. That’s what I’ve done ever
since, but apparently I’ve overdone it.
Now
I’m trying to learn to like salt again. This morning at breakfast, as I spread
my toast with salted butter, I got to thinking about food fads and how silly
some of them are. Consider salted butter – most contemporary recipes that
include butter specifically call for unsalted
butter. Then they instruct the cook
to add salt. That, to me, is an artifice and a bit of snobbery.
As
I learned at my grandmother’s knee when she churned cream into butter, unsalted
butter is essentially tasteless. She always added salt at the end of her labor
of turning the crank that moved the paddle in her churn and working the wad of
resulting butter with a wooden spoon to press out all of the drops of
buttermilk.
So
I say phooey on unsalted butter.
Another
affectation – one that seems to have subsided a bit – was the balsamic vinegar
craze. As vinegars go, balsamic is very strong tasting, and that strong taste
can easily overwhelm the taste of salad vegetables. Now the consensus seems to
have shifted to red wine vinegar, but I’ll bet there’s half-used bottle of
balsamic vinegar in most of our kitchen cabinets.
I
don’t know why our culture is so easily enticed to faddishly take up new foods,
(think quinoa, think kosher salt) but we seem to have an insatiable hunger for
the different and we strive to create something totally new to eat as well as
something superior.
Recently
at a new Japanese restaurant I ordered, at a friend’s recommendation, something
named Avocado Bomb. (Yep, that’s it in the photo.) It turned out to be a
construction of shrimp, mango, unidentifiable white things, and slices of
avocado topped with red roe and spicy sauces. It was interesting but my
interest waned long before the bomb had disappeared into my maw.
Personally,
I favor the old tried and true in my diet. Fried chicken with mashed potatoes
and gravy are a marriage made in heaven to me. Nothing beats bacon and eggs for
breakfast, or for supper for that matter. Lettuce and tomato salad during
homegrown tomatoes season rates a ten in my book.
But
you all go ahead and fill your cabinets with ten kinds of vinegar, dozens of
spice bottles, and all the other fashionable ingredients as they come and go.
Please let me know how it all turns out.
Copyright 2017 by Shirley Domer
