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I grew up with Morton's - and in fact, I still have a couple of boxes of Morton's in the house! I never bought kosher salt - I did not do 'koshering' of meat and plain non iodized Morton's salt was fine for making chutneys and pickle. But after living in France (cliche incoming) I discovered a whole new world of salt, that it was harvested and mined locally and can influence the taste and feel of food. And then buying a bag of salt from the shores of West Africa, from where my ancestors came, was very potent.

It was really awesome to see that you got to speak to Jim Dixon! One little bit that I would have is that vegetables, roots, grains and seeds are seemingly sold cheaply- but they are truly not cheap. Vegetable foods, the foundation of our diet, is inherently precious! I have been growing a lot of my own veg and gleaning fruit from byways here in Portland, and let me tell you, there is real labor there. If anything, the big salads, minestrone type soups, stews and veg forward mains are all the more precious.

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I've never used Diamond Crystal - maybe b/c we just had Morton's iodized growing up, and then I lived in Chicago so I guess that's why I switched Morton's Kosher? But, I went to Wellspent yesterday & bought olive oil & Chinese snacking nuts & some fun wines and it made me feel like I have a really nice life. Screw Cargill!

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I came late to Diamond. Growing up in Chicago, and passing the Morton Salt building every time you drove into the city, we all used Morton. However, as a midwesterner, I'm happy to dump a Cargill product -- so off to play with salts.

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..."if you have really good olive oil and salt, you can otherwise eat pretty cheaply, and so it makes sense to take extra care with these ingredients." #truth

Also, some great Aussie producers https://www.olssons.com.au/ and https://murrayriversalt.com.au/

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We use local salt from https://sfsalt.com/collections/pure-salts (although we buy it in bulk from Rainbow Grocery in SF). It's just a little bit finer than Diamond Kosher, so you can still use it proportionally in recipes that call for that kosher salt.

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