cheese is cool.

Chapter six was seriously the coolest. I love cheese, Millie doesn't though, so I'm sure she didn't like this chapter. Anyway, there were cheese masters who probed the cheese with their fingers. This puzzled me, but I won't ask questions. They knew what they were doing because, after all, they were cheese masters. We shouldn't question them and their probing. In this chapter, I also learned that a sane person should never eat salami.

I've really alarmed myself at how often I relate this book to my life. My friends might be getting annoyed at me for constantly mentioning salt and threatening to salt their fields.

I also learned several tasty recipes in chapter six, which I would add to my Salt, A World History cook book, if I had one.

marco polo?!

I was a bit disappointed about some of Marco Polos adventures not being true. Even if I don't know about any of his adventures, it's still a pretty big let down.

I got really excited when I got to read about the Chinese again, I missed them. The enjoyed their finer grained salts. This sparked my interest, but I liked the part about soy sauce a lot more. Mostly because we all know that you can not stay alive on fine grained salt and water alone. Throw some soy in there though, and you're good to go.

So pretty much after that I found out that Venice lost their big old salt ship in the sea and took over Cyprus and made it an insanely awesome salt producing island. Talk about crazy.

We built this city on salt....and not rock and roll...at all.

I got really excited when I spotted the Plebeians and Patricians. I welcome familiar territory. I was glad to see that all Romans could have their salt. That's very important, so I've learned. I don't think I'd eat pigs if I lived in this time period. It sounds very unappetizing, and I'll leave it at that.

Salt taxes seem to be a pretty popular thing throughout history. That kind of interested me, a little bit. I'm completely convinced that the Roman's were the coolest people ever. Mostly because they built awesome things, but especially because they recognized the importance of salt. They even paid soldiers in salt some times. Talk about awesome. Actually, I'd probably be a bit disappointed, but I'm sure those Roman soldiers loved it.

I'm making that salt and vinegar cabbage recipe for dinner tomorrow. It sounds delicious. I've finally come to accept that the Egyptians didn't invent ham, and the Celtics did. So, you can all stop making fun of me for it :) Anyway, another reason why these people are cool? Olives. This time I'm being completely serious and not one bit sarcastic. I love olives. I was completely overwhelmed with recipes in this chapter, but that's okay because I enjoy cooking.

One last thing that excited me like no other, garum. Oh my goodness, the Chinese really did make quite an impact with soy sauce! Everyone copied that and just had to have their own salty condiment! I feel like I could open my own ancient Roman cuisine restaurant now. I just might.

Celts....

So yeah...hooray for the people with brightly colored salt-preserved clothes. I'm a little freaked out by the whole finding people completely preserved in the mountains thing. These Celts might just be a little more insane that the Chinese. Reading about them storing food in a big old moustache made me feel a little sick. They should probably credit their "rippling muscles" to salt. I've finally come to accept that salt is the reason we are alive. Without salt, we would be nothing.

I do wish we had awesome salt mountains like the Celts. I'm completely jealous. Another thing that disturbed me a bit was the whole almost going cannibal thing when they got trapped in their mines. Maybe I'm not so jealous of their salty mountains...

I am slowly losing interest in salt. What a shame. I really did try in the beginning. Although, the whole cannibal thing really did spark my interest a bit.

Fish and whatnot.

First off, I was incredibly excited to see that the Egyptians also had a salty sauce! How interesting. Perhaps it's just my concussion, but I found this chapter incredibly hard to follow. I am especially enjoying staring at a bright computer screen right now, so if this makes absolutely no sense, you know why. Anyway, the Egyptians liked salt almost as much as the Chinese! What a thriller. We all know about the Egyptian's freakish desire to preserve everything, and salt was wonderfully useful for this since it killed the bacteria in flesh. The Egyptians also were the first to preserve food on a large scale, so kudos to them.

Now I am thinking about salt licks for deer. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is because the book is indeed called salt. I'm also thinking about sardines because they are preserved little fishys. I would not eat them, but the Egyptians might because they put salted fish in their tombs. They also liked some good salted mullet, so why not sardines? I'm also very proud of the Egyptians for inventing ham, even though they said it carried leprosy and everyone hated pig farmers. I'd still be their friend because I really do enjoy ham.

The Egyptians were pretty crafty when they wanted some salt. They would evaporate it from the Nile Delta, get it from African trade, or get it from dried salt deposits. I'm utterly amazed by this. If I wanted some salt right now, I wouldn't even think to go to any of these places. I'd go to the store and buy myself some Morton's. Anyway, the whole chapter was about salty fish and birds, and the occasional salty dead person. I will most likely be rereading this chapter when my brain decides to heal.





Keeping with the amazing salty item photo trend, I have posted a delightful ham. Enjoy.


edit: My bad. I guess they didn't invent ham. I'm sorry my brain is failing at picking up information. Please forgive me all of my dear blog followers for filling your brains with nonsense.

Salt...?

When we received this book, I was wondering what salt really had to do with history. I mean, I knew it was valued, but I had no idea it contributed so much to early Chinese history and government. I never even thought about the importance of salt until I read this. To us, salt is taken lightly because we can easily obtain it. Sometimes too easily because it's in everything. Now I know that we can blame the Chinese for that because they were the first to preserve things through pickling. Honestly, the whole time I read this I couldn't stop thinking about beef jerky because it's weird and way too salty.

Anyway, whenever the book went on about soy sauce for awhile I almost completely lost interest. I couldn't really find how to apply soy sauce to my life or see how this would effect society. After I read on though, it was mentioned that the condiments were used to stretch salt. So after that, I stopped being so negative about the whole thing and realized that maybe it was significant. I will thank the Chinese, however, for their contribution to the pickling phenomenon. I do enjoy the occasional pickle. Every little thing, such as the condiments and the pickling actually really were important because they were the beginning of salt's impact on society.

Seriously though, I was amazed at how much of an impact salt really did have on their society, especially how it created the whole debate about the need for taxing and the argument that it was against morals. They needed to tax to make money so that they could keep up with their countries modern needs, but some felt it was unnecessary and wrong to force the citizens to pay so much for something that was a necessity to them. I really didn't think I would say this when I began reading this book, but now I'm hooked and i believe it will be moderately interesting to learn more about this. I still don't understand what inspired this guy to write a book about salt history though.




















I found it necessary to post a picture of some soy sauce for dramatic effect.