I never know with these word prompts whether I’m gonna tell you the truth or spin some yarn. Sometimes I want to do both. And I bet sometimes I could trick you on which one was true, if it wasn’t too far fetched. Of course, sometimes my life is so weird you might guess wrong!

Let’s picture it: pure white, uniform crystals that faintly glitter, mounded up like a snow capped peak outside Denver. Dense and easily confused with sugar, but smaller granules in common households. Representative of superstitions and a commodity throughout all the years of human existence. Found in every home, forever and always. Frequently given as a traditional housewarming gift known as a pounding: pound of sugar, pound of flour, pound of butter, pound of cornmeal, and a pound of salt. May their lives always have flavor.

My grandmother loved salt. She added it liberally to watermelon, beans, creamed potatoes, anything just about. After she passed, I couldn’t ever get my mashed potatoes to come out like hers and Uncle Dale laughed and said, “Pilgrim, you ain’t dumpin’ enough salt to ’em!” That was a fact. She must’ve used half a salt shaker at a time for a pot of them.

My cousin must have watched her cooking pretty close, because she decided to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies when she was around ten or so. According to her, she read the teaspoon as tablespoon….but I think she was channeling Grandmother and thought they would taste better with a copious amount of salt because everything else did! We tried to eat them….but they were decidedly disgusting. I couldn’t make fun of her, though. Us cousins don’t have the best track record when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. I had tried to make some in the toaster oven when I was older than I care to admit.

I have a friend now who just won’t eat it. He refuses to salt anything at all. Not potatoes, not eggs, not nothin’. I’m not a big fan, myself, due to everything having sodium already added, but I do have to salt my taters, maters, and eggs! I mean, it’s detrimental to the quality of taste. Pepper just don’t cut it sometimes. And butter tastes better salted. I’m not much of a baker, so it’s not like I’m screwing up some scientific ratio recipe (also why I’m not much of a baker). Now, I tell you what I don’t like. Saltwater in my mouth. Instant gag. I feel like when I’m swimming in the ocean I should take my Camelback out there just in case. It’s so gross, and all I can envision are the little microbes swimming around in it and all the nastiness that’s drifted over from Tokyo…ICK. This coming from a girl who remembers licking the cattle’s salt blocks in the pasture field.

That makes me think of all the thousands of discussions I’ve had over the counter at the Co-op about white salt versus trace mineral salt. Hint: IT’S THE SAME THING!!!!!!!!! Look at the label. There’s just enough copper in it to turn it brown. If you want a mineral, buy a mineral. but if you’re feeding quality feed in the correct amounts, you probably don’t need to. I’m gonna go ahead and quit on that note before I get my blood pressure up.

I thought I was doing so good, I was only buying the straight-outta-the-mountains Himalayan Pink Salt that you have to use a salt mill for. It’s supposedly “good salt” like avocados are “good fat”. Well, I’ve got bad news. According to my cardiologist, whom I trust implicitly, salt is salt is salt. Is salt. So just buy the cheap stuff. Don’t waste your time or brain cells. It’s all gonna kill us. Even though they inject potassium as a lethal injection, no doubt they could use salt. AND, we’d already be halfway to preserved. Remember Call packed Gus in all that salt to get him back to Texas from Montana? It is good for that. And tanning hides. I’m not talking about the kind we got growing up, but literal hides.

So. All in all, salt ain’t so bad. You gotta have it. It’s not necessarily life giving, but it’s life sustaining. One doesn’t say so-and-so “is the sugar of the Earth” or “the kale of the Earth”. No. they say “salt of the Earth”. Because salt is important.

There’s a whole book if you’d like actual facts about salt (not just my witless ramblings), and it was a best seller last year. Get it here—- https://amzn.to/2TI1MXr