Our friends live in an area with a larger Whole Foods with more variety than I've seen at ours. One thing their Whole Foods offers is a salt bar with several different kinds of salt. I bought enough different kinds of salt to fill several half-pint jars. How pretty is that!
To fancy up the little salt jars even more, I found these printable jar labels. (I copied #8 into Photoshop then added the title of each salt to make cute little lid labels.) As you can see on the lids below, I bought Himalayan Pink Salt (in a chunkier form than the kids are used to so they could really taste the granules), Grey Sea Salt, Hawaiian Red Salt, Fleur De Sel, and Applewood Smoked Salt.
The kids have heard me talk in the past about why we eat "pink salt" instead of regular salt on our foods. They know that the trace minerals in pink salt is important for our bodies and that "lab manufactured" salt is just a pointless waste to eat. They also know that we generally add pink salt at the table so that the trace minerals aren't destroyed in the cooking process. However, I don't really think that any of them knew about any other kinds of salt besides pink salt and regular salt.
So, to facilitate a discussion about the various kinds of salt, where they come from, and the slight taste differences between them, I made sourdough spelt pretzels and sauteed asparagus for the kids to try out the different salts.
Paulie and Philip decided that they liked the bacon-y flavored Applewood Smoked Salt the best. Elizabeth preferred the powdery Grey Sea Salt. Finn just kept asking why they "made the salt all those different colors" so I think the experiment was a bit lost on him.
Paul and I both liked the Hawaiian Red Salt on the sauteed asparagus, although the Applewood Smoked salt was delicious on a fresh sliced Cherokee Purple tomato.
I can't wait to find other ways to bring out the flavor of our salts in various dishes. What a fun experiment this is!
Nice post! I love you, my friend who is happy to accompany me to shop Whole Foods for different salts, get a drink while we wait for our Indian takeout, and then sit at home flipping through Nourishing Traditions and the kombucha instruction book. I can honestly say there is no one else in my life that I could do this with. Had a great weekend with you guys, as always. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful collection of salt. I love your labels Joy, they are so pretty! We also use the pink salt here.
ReplyDeletexo xo
Linda
I became very hungry looking at the asparagus :) Lovely photos!
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ReplyDeleteI have a friend who is a salt junkie and every year for the holidays I seek out a new and exciting salt to give her. There is a little town in Michigan where they have an herb store with a whole shelf of fun home grown salts to try, And I am still slowly going through the amazing salt another friend brought us from France. Anyhow, you should read the book SALT. It's a really good read and you will know more about the history and importance of salt than you ever thought possible :)
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