Salt, Is There Anything It Can't Do? Redux

Long time readers of this blog know that yours truly is a big fan of salt. I love the stuff the way koalas love eucalyptus leaves. I love it the way Joey Chestnut loves Nathan's hot dogs.* I love it the way Charlie Sheen loves grain alcohol. Salt is good food.

So, when someone releases an article extolling the many uses of salt, I'm not surprised at the versatility of the wonderful granules of goodness. Indeed, the Salt Institute's report on uses for salt is somewhat similar to the Web article I linked to in my 2007 post.

There are 14,000 uses for salt! That's just slightly more than the receipes I have for the stuff. (If the secret ingredient for Iron Chef were salt, I might just stand a chance. My presentations would be a little grainy, though.)

What I really love though is the fact there's such a place as the Salt Institute at all.  This sounds like a dream job for me, so long as I was in a taste-tester position. I think it would be cool if the institute had leadership positions

The part of their Web site that I find most inspiring is the "Miracle uses" section. I know salt is mentioned in the Bible (several places but Matthew 5:13 is the one that comes to mind. I shudder to think of unsalty salt -That's dirt, people.**) However, I did not know salt could extinguish grease fires, clean fish tanks, drip-proof candles, kill poison ivy, keep windows frost free, and track and capture Osama Bin Laden.

OK, I made that last one up, but given a chance, I bet salt could swing it.

**********
Osama Bin Laden is sitting in his private cave on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is a knock at the door.

Osama: Who is it? More Jehovah's Witnesses, I bet!

Voice: Candygram.

Etc. etc. and pretty soon Osama is sitting in a U.S. Marine encampment, with dozens of paper cuts, and  covered head to toe in coarse kosher salt.

Angela Jolie: Wow, and I thought my character in Salt was badass.

**********
Salt is a tough mammajamma, baby.

*I am a fan of Nathan's as well, just not in the same quantities.
**There is the downside of that whole thing about Lot's wife. I'm guessing though that she was fairly unsalty salt.

Salt: Is There Anything It Can't Do?

Ah, salt! Our friend salt is capable of even more than I realised. Thanks to an article from Planet Green (a site about money? photosynthesis? I didn't get much past the salt article, to be honest) I now know that salt is capable of so much more than just seasoning foods of all kinds and temporarily blinding trespassers*.

Now, salt is a maginificent seasoning. Let's not ever forget that. Why, in Taiwan they're even adding salt to coffee. A more cycnical person would suggest that it's out of desperation, given that coffee smells great but tastes like stale liniment (well, that's a close guess. I've never actually tasted liniment, and on the advice of DOUI legal counsel F. Johnny Lee, wouldn't recommend it, stale or otherwise.) I think the Taiwanese have simply realised that the taste of salt masks incredibly high levels of caffiene better than even triple creme and hazelnut.

Anyhow, according to the Planet Green article, salt can be used to freshen the old waste disposal, keep grease from splashing up whilst frying**, double as a mouthwash (with baking soda, alas), remove stains, clean up the old mop, and even balance a national budget. Unfortunately, in the latter case, French Guiana's.

I personally have a long and fruitful relationship with salt (and I do not mean by this that I use fruit flavoured salts. Bacon Salt is the only tolerable flavoured salt.) As a child, I was known for my heavy consumption of mustard and salt sandwiches. These consisted of a slice of enriched, white bread, about a teaspoon of yellow sandwich mustard, spread thiny on the bread, and table salt, shaken on the bread until the mustard turned the colour of aged ivory piano keys.

I'm one of the few people I know who thinks fried salt pork is an adequate substitute for bacon. Actually, I'd prefer it if not for the constant suggestions that I might drop dead in mid-rasher.

I typically add salt to everything, even tortilla chips in Mexican restaurants. My philosophy is that if I can't see grains of salt on the item of food in question, it might not be there at all, regardless of the labelling. However, I do not add salt to salt as that would cover up the flavour of the original salt. I'm not mad, you know.

My siblings used to wonder if I was the salt monster from Star Trek the Original Series, and instead of taking the shape of Dr. Leonard McCoy's old flame I had assumed the disguise of a skinny, slightly sweaty adolescent. I think it was this uncertainty that led them to ignore my heavy salt intake, given that any prohibition might set me upon family members for my abnormally high doses of sodium chloride. Just to help along that fear, if one of them looked askance at me as I was emptying a shaker of the stuff, I'd hold up my hands and make that wheezy slurping sound from the creature on the series.

Amazingly, my sodium levels are completely normal after all these years and my blood pressure is on the high side of normal. Still, I can't recommend it for any other person. I'm abnormally tolerant to salt, the way Tom Cruise is apparently tolerant to Prozac.***

It's wonderful though to know that salt has so many other uses. I just hope this isn't a conspiracy to get me to clean mops and the waste disposal.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and freshen my breath for the twentieth time today...

* If it helps, I used kosher salt on those Jehovah's Witnesses, last week.
** I'm guessing Mike Nelson would've liked to know that one last month, if he didn't already.
*** I kid! I think it's quite clear Tom Cruise isn't taking any psychiatric medication at all.

Can You Hear Those Brussels Sprouts Screaming?

Fox News is reporting that a Swiss bio-ethics panel is expressing concern over cruel and immoral treatment to (wait for it) ...plants. (Scroll down for the, pardon the expression, meat of the story.)

According to the report, which came from a Weekly Standard report, which presumably came from translators since I've no idea how many people at The Weekly Standard speak French, German, Italian, Esperanto, or whatever the national languages of Switzerland are, (deep breath)...

Anyway, according to the Fox News report, the panel issued the following points:

• "humans cannot claim 'absolute ownership' over plants"
• "individual plants have an inherent worth"
• "man may not use them as he pleases"

So put down those brussels sprouts you were callously munching on, because according to the mighty Swiss government panel, you can't do as you please with them.

The panel apparently went on to use the example of a farmer "decapitating" wildflowers and expressed that this was representative of a moral stance towards the organism. Right, and I spray weedkiller because I'm obviously a genocidal maniac with a predisposition towards violent poisonings.

So, the next time you see some lovestruck lad of a yodeler sitting in a meadow in the Alps, plucking petals and reciting the Suisse rendition of "she loves me, she loves me not," don't be surprised to find that it's followed by Swiss Airborne shock troops paratrooping down towards this unfortunate mountain boy and giving him the kind of walloping the US Marines have been reserving for Osama Bin Laden.

Of course, they'll parachute so as not to murder all that lovely grass between Gert the lovelorn shepherd and their military barracks.

I wanted to find out a bit more about the growing plants rights movement, so I rang the head of P.L.A.N.T. (Please Leave All Nature Thus), a Mr. Dan Rather-Barmy to see where they stood on the Swiss declaration and other plant-centric matters.

Earl: Mr. Rather-Barmy, thanks for agreeing to meet with me.

D.R-B.: My pleasure, just so long as you're not one of those plant-murdering, veggie-ravishing, asparagus-torturing lunatics that thinks that cracking open a coconut is someone's idea of a good time.

Earl: You mean 99.99999% of the human race?

D. R-B.: I'd have thought it were more than that.

Earl: I'm generalizing for time's sake. Anyway, I assure you I'm not one of those people. I don't like coconut.

D. R-B.: It'll have to do.

Earl: Anyway, Mr. Rather-Barmy...

D. R-B.: Please, call me Dan. My surname's not a bit helpful in these matters.

Earl: (whispered) On the contrary, it's quite descriptive.

Dan: I heard that!

Earl: Sorry, I was talking to the interior decorators.

Dan: (Suspiciously) Hmmmm ...nice save.

Earl: Thanks! Anyway, I wanted to ask you about the results of the Swiss Bio-Ethics Panel that stated that plants have an intrinsic moral worth.

Dan: Cowards! The lot of them!

Earl: Sorry, come again?

Dan: Namby-pamby, weasel-wording, double-talking bastards! They think they can talk their way into the good graces of Kingdom Plantae by offering a collection of philosophically vague aphorisms that are scant solace against the daily torments that our plant brethren endure!

Earl: Even the bit about plant decapitation?

Dan: (Grudgingly) Well... that was the best bit.

Earl: I think we can both agree on that much. Right then, what else should they have said?

Dan: Plants are people!

Earl: What, people? ...like you and I and David Beckham and Oprah and Donald Trump?

Dan: ...Not Trump.

Earl: Fair enough, but real people just like the others?

Dan: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes! Plants have a wide range of personalities and characters. Why, I know a little rutabaga that reminds me a great deal of Oprah!

Earl: Conversationalist, is she?

Dan: Oh, quite the chatty swede!

Earl: Someone phone Tom Cruise. I'm sure they'll hit it off.

Dan: ...And there's a bok choy plant in my friend's greenhouse who's a regular David Bowie!

Earl: The "Ziggy Stardust" Bowie?

Dan: More like the "Thin White Duke" Bowie.

Earl: So, a sort of funky, drugged out bok choy?

Dan: ...with a wicked synthesizer technique.

Earl: Okkkayyy... so, what about violence towards plants?

Dan: Violence towards plants should be punished in the strongest way!

Earl: Which would be?

Dan: Lethal injection or, if necessary, the guillotine.

Earl: Just in case the lethal injection doesn't do the trick?

Dan: Exactly!

Earl: All right then, how do we determine who gets the chop?

Dan: Well, start with the most heinous offenders, of course, just to send a message to the rest of the world that they'd better get their act together!

Earl: Whose blocks would you lop off then?

Dan: Some cows for starters! Right butchers they are, with chlorophyll all over their hooves.

Earl: Teeth?

Dan: That's what I meant! Then, go after all those salad chefs, the cutthroats! Several others come to mind... Ingrid Newkirk, Paul Newman...

Earl: Paul Newman?

Dan: The salad dressing manufacturer! He might as well be making catsup for Soylent Green!

Earl: I see... please continue.

Dan: Euell Gibbons...

Earl: Isn't he already dead?

Dan: Dig him up and make an example of him, just like Cromwell!

Earl: Listen, I've noticed that you seem to come down against eating plants at all.

Dan: Right!

Earl: So, are you advocating an all meat diet?

Dan: Oh no! I don't believe in eating meat of any kind! That's animal-icide!

Earl: OK... so, we've ruled out plants. We've ruled out meat. Fungi?

Dan: As much a plant as you or I!

Earl: I'll take that as a "No." No plants, no animals, no fungi, no living matter of any kind... just what are we supposed to live on?

Dan: Salt.

Earl: Salt?

Dan: Salt, and water.

Earl: Right, salt and water... (Under breath) Imagine being a restaurateur in that environment. (Aloud) Well, let's change gears a bit. What exactly do you feel should be our general attitude towards plants?

Dan: Plants should be treated with love and affection, and taken out to dinner and to the movies before a salt and water nightcap up at my place.

Earl: You don't say.

Dan: Oh, no... I did, just then.

Earl: That and more, chap... that and more.