Pass the salt shaker and the sugar bowl please!

 

It is now fashionable to put sea salt on everything from dark candy chocolate bars to salted caramel apple cupcakes. But I have loved salty sweet treats for as long as I can remember.

It started with salty peanut butter and sweet chocolate…. Yes, bring on the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups! Bring on the salted nut rolls and the candy corn and peanuts! If I didn’t have the dime to buy candy I’d butter saltine crackers and eat with a handful of chocolate chips…please tell me I’m not alone in these cravings. Doesn’t everyone like salty sweet?

When I lived in Minneapolis a good friend taught me how to really enjoy movies at the Uptown Theater. We’d start with a bag of hot, realbutter buttered popcorn and top it with a bag of M&Ms—you get salty popcorn mixed with sweet melty chocolate! The perfect foreign film food. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it as my grandma used to say.

Now my daughter has told me about milk-chocolate-covered potato chips. What! Who is the absolute genius who came up with that idea? I tried them and I couldn’t believe how delicious they were. You can’t eat just one… (that’s a Lay’s potato chip joke).

 

As I have gotten older of course I now want to eat healthier so I enjoy a lot more salads. I do find that even plain salad can be better with a bit of salt and sweet…crispy bacon with toasted pecans… sweet apples and baked tortilla chips…. it’s about the crunchy texture and the sweet taste. If we weren’t meant to enjoy all these wonderful flavors why did God give us taste buds?

So I say pass the salt shaker and the sugar bowl please!

Chocolate is not cheating! After a salty meal, you need a little bit of sweet. This is not cheating, it’s living.

Ali Landry

Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of homestyle recipes.