h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

{[caer]} who loves coriander, aniseed, liquorice and is thrilled that you can now get squeezy Marmite

Z loves paneer when he can get hold of it. In theory you can make paneer at home, because it is milk curdled with lemon, but I've never tried that.

> I've heard it takes 3 weeks for your taste for salt to disappear and then you don't miss it. Anyone know if this is true?

More or less. I cannot remember the term for it, but your body doesn't have an absolute sense of how much salt is enough, just a relative sense, so you will crave the same amount you had yesterday. Three weeks sounds about right for it to recalibrate. Personally, if I was cutting out salt, I wouldn't necesarily go cold turkey, just cut back and recalibrate and then cut back and recalibrate and take a while over it.

Horrible wet day here today, and I've got a - not a migraine, but a normal . Very odd.

B

I never add salt to anything I cook, and never miss it. I always add lots of flavour with herbs and spices, pepper but not salt. Very occasionally I have cravings for things like salted popcorn, but not often. I suppose people that eat stuff I cook might think it needs some salt in it, if they are used to that, but I'd rather have a cellar on the table and let them add it than have to eat it myself...

Toiling inside the house today

S is cutting salt out of his diet right now, to help control the mysterious high blood pressure (he had his kidneys ultrasounded the other day. Yep, they're both there. The GP was beginning to suspect one of them wasn't). Some dishes I don't even notice they aren't salted (spicy food, creamy food). Others, like rice, pasta, I really notice. Hmm.

*cough cough cough atchoo sniff*

Anyway. I am now officially on holiday for a couple of weeks, which meant that I spent last week in a frenzy at work, making sure my job-share had no reason to hate me and that the place wouldn't fall apart without me etc. Of course it would. The Library can survive happily for a few weeks with no Librarian, but no Issue Desk staff, shelvers or repair-mongers... nothing doing. We can't even let the students in if there aren't enough Issue Desk staff. Remind me again why I'm paid less than half what the Librarian is paid? Oh I agree the Head Honcho is very very important and makes sure we get budgets and stuff and strategies and harangues the University on our behalf, and you need to be a clever experienced person with lots of qualifications etc who once did do the grunt work and everything, but I'm just saying, I go away for a week, the books fall apart. Hah.

So I spent the morning in bed wondering if this was hay-fever (which doesn't normally bother me in wet weather) or a real cold after all, which is just ing typical. *cough cough*

*mentally revises what she's just been saying*

Do you know, I still can't work out how much of that made sense?

I have an old high school buddy and his wife coming for a visit tomorrow afternoon. So, the question is, do I spend all day inside cleaning and let the rest of the yard work go, or do I finish off the yard work then throw everything moveable into the Doom Room and shut the door against all intruders? I had just about gotten the Doom Room empty so I can rip up the carpet. But the problem is that I accomplished this by moving the stuff to the guest room and the porch.

I need the porch for us to sit on and enjoy my new baby pond and fountain. And I definitely need a clean guest room. Plus I absolutely have to get some things I bought right before all the rain started planted before it all dies on me. And the cemetery pots made for Memorial Day. My cucumber seeds rotted during the rainy weather so I have to replant them. And it is finally got enough to plant my beans. I don't need a clean Doom Room for another 6 weeks. So, it's pretty much a no brainer, I suppose.

Kelli, I use a lot of salt - way too much. I really need to cut back on it.

Agapanthus, ahem........! Librarians are probably the single thing standing between western civilization and the invading Mongol hoards. It is a grave responsibility. That's why we need more vacations than the circulation clerks and the shelvers. And we are actually very underpaid.

I don't add any salt when I'm cooking but...

However there is no way on this planet I could enjoy fish & chips without salt and vinegar.


[BB]

Oh and it's wet down here, I was supposed to be doing a load of work on the weed patch this weekend and instead I'm sitting here procrastinating over cleaning up the dumpster I call a living room or going and getting the bits to re-build my server, the old one keeled over a couple of weeks ago.

Most of the things mentioned so far - that people really miss not having salt on - are all things I generally don't eat because they have too many carbs/calories to make them worthwhile. Perhaps this is how I avoid salting anything, I don't eat stuff that *needs* salt.

Ow! Well, Hyp, I don't think the Head of an Academic Library in Britain is quite so underpaid as the Head of a Public Library in the States, if that's any, not, consolation, what do I mean? Has someone been decaffeinating my coffee while I wasn't watching? I'm sure he is holding off barbarian hordes with the best of them. Just, he does it in meetings, and we do it at the front line of rubber-gloves-on involved with blocked toilets, mouldy sandwiches, drunkenness, book moves, students pretending to be deaf and/or Martian when asked to turn their mobile phones off, and emergency book-mending to stop that nice but frantic lecturer weeping all over the counter. He is far too busy and has far too many meetings to go to to ever do counter duty or emergency we're-out-of-trolleys shelving. When it comes down to it, we hold off the hordes, and he supplies the cash for us to hold off the hordes with, and therefore like the King in Chess he is Vital and Must Be Protected At All Costs, but it's the pawns who get munched by the hordes. And who can't go on holiday without all the other pawns weeping and wailing and wishing they wouldn't. I KNOW that YOU are a different sort of Librarian and would never leave your pawns to deal alone with toddlers widdling in the bins, and you deserve 30 weeks paid holiday a year and your wages doubled and a parade in your honour every September. But then, you are unusually wonderful.

Actually, Ag, I can sympathize with your position. One of the large library districts in the state is advertising for a new director. The starting salary is $145K. I read that and got really po'd because for the life of me I can't think of a single thing the old one does. He has an enormous staff and pretty much plays on the Internet all day and drinks coffee. He only shows up about 4 hours a day. Whereas, I make much, much less and actually have to manage a library. He wouldn't last a week in my job.

Morning all.

*gazes into space remembering old episodes of Red Dwarf*

Ag - you should remember that salaries are often inversely proportional to how important people are. s, teachers, dustbinmen, shop assistants and anyone civilisation would collapse without get paid a pittance compared with actors, footballers, etc.

What Bagpuss said about salaries is true in the US as well. In our area teachers are grossly underpaid!

...is going to check BBC America and see if the Red Dwarf is playing on it any time soon........

One of my PBS stations carries Red Dwarf, I watch often.

We only have one PBS station and unfortunately it isn't carrying Red Dwarf right now. I checked SciFi as well. May I please borrow your PBS station, GDZ?

Lentilla, I'm in northwest Austin, near 183 and 360. Enjoy the relativing and try to keep cool if at all possible.

I don't generally add salt to anything. The exception being various squashes and watermelon.

I my PBS station, I get Red Dwarf, Red Green, and Monty Python all in one night!

Lentilla: <>

What is up with salting watermelon? I know people who salt all kinds of fruit, including strawberries and pineapple!

As part of my diet, I'm having to hunt out salt and eliminate it, It's just astounding to me all the things that it gets added to! I think it would just save me time to assume it's *everywhere*.

SC

Good to hear that S has both his kidneys but it's a bit of a worry about why he's still got the high blood pressure though.

The damp morning stayed and has now been damp all day. We countered this by going out and visiting a bit of a local food fair held in a nearish town (Buxton, very genteel). Lots of local producers selling good stuff from sausages to pies to beer, chocolate and chutneys. We now seem to have a fridge with lots of fresh stuff in.

Salt, generally don't add it to stuff and try and get tinned stuff in either reduced or no salt formulations (I mean, why add sugar and salt to a tin of beans?).

SC, I'm the one who salts the watermelon. It enhances the sweetness and tends to be something very popular in the southwestern US.