Ha! Thought I forgot about you, didn’t you? Well, I almost sorta did. It was a busy week and here I am, nearly two weeks after my last post. I’ll try and get two in this week.
I’ve been meaning to document about how coming back to North America has affected me for some time. I’ve talked about it a fair amount with friends and especially with Christine: we’ve had some adjustments together and apart from each other. There are so many aspects that I’m going to start with one that’s been pretty easy for us to confront, as we encounter it at least three times a day: food.
The first thing I noticed coming back was salt and how much of it seemed to be in so many things. I was raised in a household with high blood pressure, so salt was not added to a lot of things and I noticed it fairly easily. This did not deter me from using it when I started cooking on my own: I discovered how well it brought out tastes when used properly.
I don’t remember noticing an especial saltiness to food while I was abroad, or at least, in any place that I didn’t expect it. Of course, soy sauce made its presence known in Taiwan, and the Argentines did salt their beef before grilling it (made it worth it), as well as nearly everything, but, I don’t know, it seemed to be in the right place. Back here, I find things to be overly salty, to the point that I have stopped eating things due to excessive saltiness, especially in restaurants.
Nowadays, I find processed foods to be mildly unpleasant. I much prefer cooking using whole foods and really look forward to being able to prepare a lot of our own stuff and even preserving through canning and dehydration. The recent report that Canadians eat way too much salt didn’t surprise me at all. I take inspiration from veteran blogger and friend Andrea who tries to show that eating healthily isn’t a hard habit to adopt, even if you have a family. Here’s hoping that the gospel of healthy spreads quickly these days.
