The Salt of the Earth

Anyone who's eaten with me knows how much I hate salt.  I don't add it to any of my cooked food, and I avoid foods that have too much salt already, like ketchup and tv dinners.  How long have I not liked salty foods?  Forever.  When my mommy was pregnant with me, she couldn't eat ketchup, and it's one of her favorites.  There is one occasion when I will use salt, and that is cooking with tomatoes or tomato paste.

Today is Friday.  Friday is spaghetti day in the Apampa house.  So every Friday, I make some spaghetti sauce for my spaghetti.  (They eat their noodles with stew.)  Auntie Stella liked my sauce a lot last time I made it, so this time I wanted to make enough for both of us.  At the store, I tried to buy a bigger can of canned tomatoes.  But you see, the cans have like 18 different languages on them and I couldn't find the English.  But the pictures looked the same.

It wasn't until I opened the can to add the tomatoes to the browned garlic and onion that I saw I had tomato paste and not tomatoes.  No biggie, I'll just use the paste and add some water and salt.  Tomato paste needs salt, otherwise it's too acidity.

So I added the water, the thyme and the ground pepper and started to add the salt.  I was pouring the salt into my palm and then sprinkling it from my palm to the sauce in order to avoid too much salt.  Taste.  Mmmm... not too bad, just a pinch more salt.

I tipped the large salt container, but the salt isn't Morton's and it stayed clumped together at the bottom.  A little shake.  Nothing.  A little harder shake.  Catastrophe!  The cover came off the salt container.  Huge piles of salt, in my hand, on the stove, on the floor, and worst of all, in the sauce!

The maid and I tried to scoop as much of the salt out of the sauce as we could.  Taste. Ugh.  We added more water, the rest of the tomato paste, more onion, more pepper.  Taste.  uuuuhhhh.....  But I had to try to eat it; can't waste food.

Now, my tummy isn't so happy.  I think I can feel the salt corroding the inside of my esophagus.  :(

Sometimes, I just really need my mommy's cooking.