“Kissing is like drinking salted water: you drink and your thirst increases.” Chinese Proverb
You could apply that proverb to my last pot of soup. It’s inevitable in cooking that a recipe or two is bound to get away from you. And there’s no need to belabor my newest, particular failures, except to say that now I know that when I have a cold, the first thing to go is my sense of salt. If the sixth sense is of the spirit (not getting into a discussion of ESP here) than it makes wonderful sense that the seventh would be salt. I don’t think I could hope for a finer compliment than to be called the salt of the earth. Trouble is, when Jesus said it, he followed that up with a story about what happens when salt loses its salt (it gets tossed). He never went into particulars about salt that got out of hand, that couldn’t control itself and let fly. Like a harsh word (I know what I’m talking about here), you can’t take back the salt. Once you’ve crossed the line, there’s only one thing to do: sigh. Then toss it.
So a perfectly beautiful, formerly tasty and toothsome pot of vegetarian chili got dumped. I was justifiably heartbroken. John tried to believe it wasn’t ruined (I really was clueless), but as I watched him peck at his heaping mound of lentils, chickpeas, bulgar and barley—seasoned with chipotle peppers and just a little ginger, then sent simmering along in a broth of brown ale—I knew it was true. Down the drain we go.
My oats met the same fate this morning (For heaven’s sake! Who salts their oats?), but that’s easily remedied. Gabriel didn’t seem to notice. He chowed down his portion before I even discovered my miscalculation. But I’m blaming this one on John, or at least on my desire to have a conversation with John before he was off to work. I usually add a dash, but a dash twice moves into the realm of the teaspoon. And how much can one humble bowl of oats take?
Blue Dog 