Salt Pt. 4: On the Road Again, Please


A fine pinch of Kosher salt over the skin of a whole chicken; added to highlight the flavors of oils, honey and mustard in a black pepper vinaigrette sauce; or its stockpiling in a walking taco, all show salt in its small portion usages.  Back to the salt trade in 5th c. B.C., though, and we find that salt was one of the most critical large-scale commodities on earth, to the point that the Venetians and Genoase would, no surprise, go to war over the control of Mediterranean salt.  One such player was Wilfredo the Hairy (how impressive the name must have been to the young damsels) who rebuilt an abandoned eighth century castle on a mountain fifty miles from Barcelona

where he "could peer from the thick stone ramparts at his prize possession, the source of his wealth, the next mountain

striped in pattern and colors so lively, it was almost dizzying to look at it – salmon pink rock with white taupe, and bloodred stripes." It was the now famous salt mountain Cardona, Spain.  "Inside the mine the pink-striped shafts were ornamented by snow-white crystal stalactites, long dangling tentacles where the salt had sealed over dripping rainwater from fissures above."

Fast forward 1,127 years – last sunday morning – to a winding stretch of Minnesota highway (52 south from Mpls. to Rochester) through the danger red alert zone of Ice Storm Luna, Troydo the Wary trying to haul his family over glass thin patches of sleet ice in four wheel drive at 30 mph, ducking and weaving in around fish-tailing black sedans and jack-knifed wagons, his wife's fingers firmly molded in the dash, and we find another good use for mountains of salt: the state highway snowplow.  It took us over 5 hours to make the usual 2 1/2 hour route home.  We might have seen 20 cop cars with lights twirling, an uncountable number of cars along the road, in the ditch, contorted, or at least spun, and all we were hoping for as we went along was that the plows had been on the road again, please, laying down its pebbles of melting salt somewhere ahead so those danger red highways might turn green again.