Salt of the Forsaken Earth

Ever since I went to Transylvania last spring I've been mysteriously anemic. My blood pressure is often at dizzying lows, my heart slow and passive. There are things that help, like exercise, exorbitant water consumption, exorcisms, and SALT. I personally believe the reason salt is so effective is not that it stiffens my blood vessels but that it makes my blood so tasty to the vampire that he can't help but savor it in deliciously delayed moderation, luxuriating in the subtle & sanguine notes of blackberry, innocence, and chocolate, instead of guzzling it all down like the eternally damned fiend he is.

And that's because salt is the primary difference between restaurant food and home cooking. Snow it on your meat before roasting. Dump a cup in the pasta water. Your dinner guests will lower their forks in surprise, lost in the lovely clarity of sodium-enhanced flavors -- and later, the vampires that crouch by all your darkened bedsides will pause in their feasting, looking sweetly vulnerable for failing to notice the drops of your blood still dripping on their lace cravats, and ask themselves, "Is that a hint of sumac and Spanish paprika?"