My history with salt is, like most everyone's, a long and storied one, from the corned beef and cabbage of my Mother's St. Patrick's Day table to the Pancetta that I ate at A Voce on recent trip to New York City, a dish so brilliantly earthy and sweetly decadent, this pork belly paired with figs, crushed pistachios, and just enough balsamic, that Andrew Carmellini himself must weep with joy at every bite. I love fleur de sel caramels and bacon and Chinese takeout and until recently had eaten it all with abandon.
And then I was diagnosed with salt sensitivity, and that was the end of all that. I'll spare you the details for now, which are boring and mostly incidental to the story, I am sorry to say. The story, as I'm sure you must have figured out by now, is that I had to stop eating salt, which means that I'd have to start cooking from scratch, which is a dreadfully unwelcome prospect to a person who thoroughly enjoys having her food prepared for her. So I didn't throw myself into it with abandon, no, it took me almost two years to accept my fate.
The short of it is that I finally did, and now I'm navigating my way through the perimeters of several grocery stores every week, cooking almost every meal, and doing it all without salt. Mostly. The biggest surprise is that if you do it right, food is still delicious, and though I haven't felt brave enough to venture out to a restaurant and ask the chef to prepare a dish without salt, doing it myself at home has been a bit of a revelation, and somehow, I think I'll be okay without that pork belly from now on.
Here I present without fanfare some highlights from the past week's breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks, not all healthy (cupcakes will always be welcome in my life), but all delicious, and every bit low-sodium:
01. roast potatoes 02. strawberry cupcake 03. roast brussels sprouts & grapes 04. black beans, fresh salsa, & sour cream nachos 05. strawberries & hard boiled eggs 06. Sophie Dahl's cinnamon roast peaches with Jeni's hummingbird cake ice cream 07. frosted mini-wheats with unsweetened almond/coconut milk 08. rotini with olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, and lemon pepper 09. baked lemon pepper catfish & boiled potatoes with butter
