crucible of ennui

Once upon a time, a proud, old king asked his daughters, “How much do you love me?”

“I love you more than gold and silver” one daughter replied.

“I love you more than diamonds and rubies and pearls,” her sister said.

“I love you more than salt,” answered the third daughter.

The king grew angry when he heard this last answer. “How dare you compare me to something as poor and common as salt?” he raged, and he banished the unfortunate girl from the kingdom.

The details of each story differ, but the end is the same in all. The foolish father is served a meal without a single speck of salt in it. The food is so dull and tasteless he cannot eat it.

Which brings me to my new challenge of low-sodium cooking. A lot of the foods items you can buy to make week-nite dinners easy is pretty much off the menu. Do you have any idea how much sodium is in a serving of flavored rice? It’s out the freakin’ window.

The worst was the turkey bacon. Or as Glenn so aptly put it, Facon. We thought we’d give it a try, I mean, how bad could it really be? It was in the range of acceptable sodium amount per serving (although 1 serving was 1 piece of turkey bacon. Do you know anyone who eats only 1 piece of bacon?). So… it’s texture was kinda weird - like crispy tissue paper. And the flavor - I put a piece directly onto my tongue and my tastbuds did not registered anything there. Seriously. I could not taste it. So that was kinda disappointing.

But I didn’t make some peanut butter cookies with no-salt added peanut butter. They were okay so I brought the rest into work today and they’re already gone.

I wonder if Indian food has a lot of sodium in it….