Sea Salt

Readers, just in case you don't know this yet--and I'd wager most of you don't yet--I should say that I'm kind of a visionary.

I think gourmet salt is kind of popular right now, and it's a trend I'm really excited about. So excited, in fact, that I envisioned an hors d'oeuvre concept Monday night that was all about the salt. I don't think my guests were quite ready for that. The slices of beautiful, homegrown tomatoes, I tried to explain, were just a medium for experimenting with a smattering of prized sea salts.

I envisioned that as an interactive, sensual experiment in salt tasting, and I think the concept is uniquely mine. I'm afraid, though, that my guests didn't really take to the idea, and the whole thing felt kind of awkward. The world just isn't ready for my creativity. Someday, though, all the trendy restaurants will be experimenting with the raw beauty of gourmet salts, and I'll be left hemming and hawing about how that was my idea. I guess that's the problem with being a visionary.

On the upside, though, I was telling my dad about the whole thing, and he sort of gasped quietly and said that he'd been planning to buy me salt for my upcoming birthday. How thoughtful! Gift-giving occasions, me, and my parents are usually a terrible combination: they never know what to give me, and I never want to tell them what I want. So I was tickled that my dad thought of such a great gift--all by himself. Nevermind the fact that I beat him to the buy. (I suppose that's another problem that the average visionary has to face now and then.)

I never would have thought that he and I could have had such a great time sitting around talking about the complex and nuanced flavor of salts and potential media onto which to present them. And all that after I accidentally ran my mouth about him compromising his sauce by letting the butter get too hot.