Salt, and how we spend it.

We spend our salt very deliberately.

On cheese and yogurt and bread. 

On fun salad ingredients, and homemade salad dressing.

On cooking with friends, like the weekly roast chicken.

And on very occasional fun things… 

On sushi - Cucumber and carrot sushi for A (as it has no raw fish), and soy sauce.

On pickled okra and capers (one of the fun salad ingredients). 

On tortilla chips and sesame thins.

On the occasional bacon, chopped into some other dish, as an ingredient.

Which means we think of salt as something to spend.  When we serve food that needs to be chopped, we end up serving less salt.  A vegetable has natural sodium, but when bought in the produce section, it does not have added salt.  This isn’t true if I buy the same kind of item frozen, canned, or as part of a boxed or pouched mix.  In reading the labels on food I see how much salt is in prepared, and nearly prepared, boxed and frozen food.  So we prepare our own food,  and for A salt is a "Thin." 

When we chop a vegetable, peel a fruit, simmer a grain, the "salt" is in the already occurring sodium.  From the beginning, I didn’t add table salt to any of A‘s  food.  However over time she tasted things which do have a significant amount of salt in them, like cheese.  She ate a pickle, pickled okra, crackers, breads, and then really became fond of soup in restaurants. A eats salsa and guacamole. A loves soy sauce, but we don’t use very much.  We use hickory smoked salt to collard greens. A eats the stems.

We “spend” our salt on Chicken, Kale, Mexican food, Indian food sauces, soy sauce and fish sauce when we are cooking.  We do keep canned beans, boxed flavored couscous, and macaroni and cheese in the pantry, and all are have salt.  Because of this we use them rarely, and don't add more when serving a potion to A, or for ourselves.

We eat eggs often in the morning, but we don't routinely add salt (also known as "sprinkle") to A's eggs or our own.  When we have something new to try, salt may come to the table for that meal.  And that's because trying new flavors is a way we "spend" a little salt. –Did I mention the hickory smoked salt?