Salt News

I’m not super self-aware, except at times–though even then much of my sense of self-awareness stems from the recognition that I often have no idea what I’m doing or thinking.Jennifer has called my attention, more than once, to a habit I have of cracking my knuckles when approaching someone who has just asked me a nice plump salt question. Walking from behind the counter–or descending the ladder from which I have been arranging wine bottles or fixing the frame of one of Roger Hallin’s beautiful nudes that are hanging some 10 feet up the 17-foot-tall walls of the shop–I interlace the fingers, flip the palms forward, and flex them, releasing a quite pleasant crackling of cartilage and tendon. Opening up the energy. I think Jennifer is concerned that there is an air of fiendish glee in the gesture that visitors might find… disconcerting.

Anywhere between five and five hundred times a day, someone stands before the wall where we have about 75 salts arranged in little apothecary jars and asks, “If I want to have just one salt, which one should I choose?”

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Mark Bitterman :: May.10.2008 :: News & Musings :: No Comments »

I just returned from an exhilarating trip back east to meet up with a bunch of foodwriters. I hope to have some good written up in the days to come. I gave a presentation on salt at the end of the event and was giddy as a schoolboy for about a week afterward at the enthusiasm and interest they showed.

I just got a note from Sandra Gutierrez, who is a food writer by trade, describing her personal connection with salt.  The pink tick mark at the center of the map below depicts the site where Sandra’s story was based.

Dear Mark,

I didn’t have a chance to tell you but my grandfather was a salt producer in Guatemala, Central America. I spent many summer vacations running around the salt boxes, and remember vividly how beautiful the mounds of collected salt looked as the sun arose each morning. I remember beautiful pyramids of golds, pinks and oranges reflecting all around us. I would run around the perimeters of the salt boxes and had many falls and scrapes that were “cured” by the salt. Ouch!

The ending of this story is a sad one. In the late 1970’s the Guatemalan government expropriated our family’s land and destroyed the “salinas”. They were called “Salinas Santa Rosa”. In its place they built a port “Puerto San Jose” and the rest of the land was divided among the government representatives for their own private use. However, they couldn’t erase the beautiful memories of children playing and laughing amidst the mounds of glittering salt!

Sandra A. Gutierrez
Food Writer/Cooking Instructor
www.SandrasKitchenStudio.com

Mark Bitterman :: Apr.10.2008 :: News & Musings :: No Comments »