Salt Goes With Everything

Like this amazing quinoa toss.

Maybe you have yet to hop on the quinoa bandwagon, but honestly, just hop on it already. COMPLETE PROTEIN.

The recipe relies on salt. Salt is not something I am too familiar with, the use of it being quite limited in my youth. For no particular reason, either, and I like it that way. Things taste good enough, most of the time; if you're cooking a mix of American Italian, tex-mex, cajun, and whatever else goes with black beans, you use a lot of other spices and salt doesn't need to be so prominent. There was a time I was shocked to learn that 1) not all recipes start with "saute onion and garlic in olive oil in your large, deep-walled saute pan" and 2) sometimes salt is necessary.

But this quinoa toss. It needs it. The one I just made consists only of quinoa, onions, garlic, sauteed asparagus, and chopped almonds ... and olive oil ... and salt. And pepper and lemon juice in a remake of Heidi Swanson's citrus parmesan dressing. But it is the salt that I almost always skimp on, and here, I taste before serving and exclaim, "oh yeah salt!"

Olive oil also goes with everything. So does black, so does relativism, so does, I don't know, red wine? Maybe dark beer is a better choice.

I think about locavores these days, and I think, if I could make my own tofu, I could do that. And I would get sick of squash and pumpkin sometime in February, and canned tomatoes too, but hey. Maybe a heavy rotation of tofu/squash/corn/tomatoes would work?