Out of Salt

I don't remember my mother buying salt. I'm sure she did, but I don't recollect the item on a list any of the times we went to the Dominion or the Miracle Mart. I just remember always having a box of Windsor Salt (still in business, and the mine is still operating, BTW) on the Lazy Susan.

When I went off to school, salt was always an item on that first trip to the supermarket, but the container always lasted longer than a year, and I guess it got left behind at the dorm or rental unit when summer arrived, or circumstances changed.

It was in my third apartment in DC that I finally ran out of salt for the first time, and this struck me as symbolic: not only was I cooking more, but it also reflected the reality that I had been settled for awhile. I bought a box of Safeway brand salt (salt is salt, right?), and the metal spout promptly broke off, a lesson that I would not fully absorb until a decade later, after a series of similar incidents convinced me that it was not coincidence, and that the extra few cents for the branded option was worth it.

I don't remember how salt was packaged in Egypt, although I do remember that it wasn't iodized.

Anyway, we've been in the Triangle for three years, and we are out of salt. That's significant, I think.