Breakfast (before work, 6:30 am): more cooked fava beans; leftover roasted broccoli; blood orange; little packet of mustard peas.

Lunch (from the restaurant after work, 3:15 pm): Grilled dill havarti cheese sandwich with tomato, on multigrain bread; side of broccoli. 

Dinner: I cooked cheeseburgers as described in the October issue of Bon Appetit, in the "editor's letter," no less: the low-class/super-hipster way, with American cheese, crappy buns, iceberg lettuce, greasy meat.  You know what?  They were delicious.  Like fast-food burgers, but fresh!  Oven-fried french fries on the side.  Everything with ketchup, plus I also had mayonnaise and pickles on my burger, as recommended.  Also.  It has been a long time since I have made a burger without mixing various additions into the meat, forming patties, etc. etc.  These instructions told you to basically grab a handful of meat, smash it onto the pan, and then salt it right in the pan.  Do not disturb.  Flip.  Salt other side.  They were good this way.  I kept thinking of the scene in Parks and Recreation where Ron Swanson and Chris Traeger taste-test Ron's "Meat. On a bun." burger against Chris's gourmet turkey burger.  Ron's wins, hands down.

Before and during cooking dinner, I was also starting some prep for having guests tomorrow.  I invited them for "tea," with the caveat that there would basically be enough food to count as an early supper.  Menu: chicken salad and egg salad finger sandwiches.  Deb Perelman's morning bread pudding.  Deb Perelman's brownies.  Tipsy Baker's Indianers (which I think of as "cream puffs").  Fruit brought by guests.  Coffee, tea, milk.  So, this evening beforehand, I made the chicken salad (chopped Whole Foods cooked chicken breasts, dried cherries, sliced almonds, minced scallions, mayo, salt & pepper) and the egg salad (boiled egg, chopped celery, whole-grain mustard, mayo, salt & pepper).  I also assembled the bread pudding, which needs to soak overnight and get all eggy before being baked at the last minute.

Snacks: A number of spoonfuls of different milkshake flavors at work.  Started drinking a mini-cup of ginger chai at work, but then thought better of it (too much milk gives me a stomachache, also: random calories).  4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  A certain amount of necessary tasting of the chicken and egg salads.  Sherry after dinner.

Breakfast (eaten at 8:30 am, all unawares that I was about to be called in to work): I cooked the remainder of the fava beans with some onion, salt and lemon juice, and had some of these for breakfast along with a habanero-lime tortilla, a whole wheat pita, and carrot sticks.

Lunch (from the restaurant, at 2:30 after I got home from covering a co-worker's shift-- his brother was dying, so I was glad to do it): vegetable fried rice.

Shopping (Whole Foods): heavy cream, hand lotion, two prepared grilled chicken breasts from the deli, whole milk, challah, 2 mini-baguettes, sugar, herb mix salad greens, dried cherries, 2 dozen brown cage-free eggs, 6 individual Fage Greek yogurts (assorted flavors), Ghiradelli unsweetened chocolate, Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate, white bakery bread, celery, scallions, garlic, sliced almonds. $78.

Dinner: I made Donald Link's Spaghetti with Pork Jowls and Fried Eggs, plus roasted broccoli on the side.  I am suddenly really into roasting broccoli.  Okay, so my main problem with this recipe was that I really don't know what pork jowls are.  I went to my usual international grocery store with all its unusual (to Americans) cuts of meat, hoping I might find pork jowl, clearly marked, but no such luck.  And I'm thinking that probably I just should have gone with pork belly-- or pancetta for God's sake-- but instead I choked and bought some generic "stew pork" that was obviously not right.  So, my spaghetti had a really delicious cream sauce that featured random bits of chewy pork floating in it.  I'm sure something fattier was intended.  That said, the deep-fried eggs (poached first, then chilled, then breaded and fried) were, if labor-intensive, quite wonderful.  And the pasta overall was rich and tasty.  I would make it again, if I didn't mind risking heart attacks for everyone at the table.  This dish is heavy.

And this, belatedly, is what pork jowl is like.  Looks like a) this is an American food, and I would have been better off in an American-style grocery store, b) bacon would have been a reasonable substitution, and c) yeah, the pork belly would have been better than the choice I made (did you know that bacon is smoked pork belly?  Boy, am I ignorant).

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  Half a cup of homemade ginger-jujube tea given to me by one of the Korean cooks at work.  Sherry in the evening.  

Breakfast (early in morning, before appointment): one packet of mustard peas.  (After appointment, also after getting gas and stopping for prescriptions at the CVS... hungry!!): Habanero-lime tortilla with sliced hard-boiled egg, melted cheddar cheese, and salsa; carrot sticks.

Lunch: 2 scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, also salsa and a little green onion and cilantro on top.  Very small bowl of Trader Joe's granola (all that remained) with whole milk.  How is there no food in the house when I just did a major grocery shopping trip two days ago?  The eggs are great, though.

Shopping (Co-op): organic 1% lactose-free milk, 2 cans cat food, Equal Exchange organic coffee, unbleached cone coffee filters, 2 boxes Cascadian Farms granola (1 maple-brown sugar, 1 chocolate almond), brown eggs, 3 blood oranges, bananas, $35.

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's Broccoli Rabe Served on a Bed of Fava Beans, whole wheat pita.  The whole fava bean puree thing proved complicated.  First of all, it is difficult to find dried fava beans, and I was unable to find the skinned, split kind that cook quickly.  I did manage to buy the large dried beans with skins.  Then, for some reason, it did not occur to me to presoak and cook only part of the fairly large bag, so I ended up boiling a LOT of fava beans.  They did not take as long as I expected to become soft in the middle, so I drained and cooled them and then tried to shell the individual beans, as most recommend (although I seem to have missed the fact that most people shell them right after soaking).  This did not work-- the skins stuck to the beans and the insides crumbled and I decided they were "too done" to shell.  However, the skins were still a little chewy, so I added some more water and put them back on to cook a while longer, figuring we'd eat the beans whole.  After more cooking, when I drained the beans again, I discovered it was now possible to shell them.  So I shelled about five cups for the recipe, and put the remainder of the cooked beans in the refrigerator for later uses.  As it turned out, the mashed beans topped with very garlicky, oily broccoli rabe were okay, but not very exciting.  It wasn't really worth all the effort.  I have had fava bean puree in restaurants that was fantastic, but this wasn't that.

Dessert: Jennifer Reese's chocolate pudding.  Easy and not terribly sweet.  My husband and daughter really liked it.  I felt it needed a little more something.  Salt, perhaps.  And maybe sweeten the whipped cream more than I did.  And the recipe made 4 petite servings, so if I made it again I would probably double it.  But it would be really easy to make it again, so that's a plus.

Feb. 15
Breakfast: The portion of my half-eaten stuffed pork chop left over from Saturday night, leftover mashed potatoes also sent home by my sister-in-law in a Ziploc baggie. 

Shopping (Trader Joe's): crispy crunchy broccoli florets, Inner Peas, quart of half and half, can of organic black beans, almond-cashew-cranberry granola, 2% lactose-free milk, habanero lime tortillas, organic brown eggs, $21.

Lunch: The other half of my restaurant breakfast from yesterday: half a breakfast quesadilla and a few home fries, with salsa and sour cream.

Dinner: scrambled eggs with cheddar and a few slices of avocado, on habanero-lime tortillas.  Topped with salsa, sour cream, a little queso fresco, cilantro, and green onion.  Small side of white rice mixed with black beans (canned ones that I seasoned up a little).

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf.  The first cup of decaf had whole milk instead of half and half, because I ran out.  The second cup of regular came from Starbucks.  4 or 5 Godiva chocolates over the course of the day.  A few Trader Joe's crispy broccoli florets (yum!  Recommend!).
 
Feb. 16
Breakfast: the rest of my steak and the other half of my baked potato from Sunday night, with a few sauteed mushrooms and butter.

Lunch: half of my daughter's grilled cheese sandwich left over from Sunday night, leftover rice and beans with a little green onion and cilantro and salsa.

Shopping (New Grand Mart): ground beef, stew pork, panko bread crumbs, dried fava beans, rice vermicelli, hamburger rolls, dried plums, dried papaya, dish soap, sliced pickles, dried black mushrooms, broccoli, spaghetti, flat-leaf parsley, whole wheat pitas, olive oil, buttermilk, heavy cream, hot sauce, coffee-flavored mochi-covered ice cream treats, fried tofu, regular firm tofu, vegetable bouillon cubes, whole milk, carrots, american cheese slices, 2 packages shanghai bok choy, 2 russet potatoes, sugar snap peas, enoki mushrooms, iceberg lettuce, broccoli rabe, $78.

Dinner: Rice noodles prepared in the following way: green beans, sugar snap peas, carrots, enoki mushrooms , and fried tofu are stirfried and then simmered briefly in a sauce made with coconut milk, tamari, Thai garlic chili paste, onion powder, lots of ginger powder.  Meanwhile the rice noodles are softened in hot water.  When vegetables are tender, toss in the rice noodles and finish with cilantro and lime juice.  I added a little more tamari and cayenne pepper at the table and it was perfect.  The noodles really absorbed the sauce, so they were fairly dry, but the coconut milk made them filling.

Feb. 17
Breakfast, before work: leftover rice noodles, a few pieces of sharp cheddar cheese.

Lunch, after work at 2:30: habanero-lime tortilla with salsa for dipping; carrot sticks; mandarin orange; small dish of Trader Joe's almond-cashew-cranberry granola with whole milk.

Dinner (with husband-- daughter away at a school function; by candlelight, because the light bulbs in the dining room had burnt out): Madhur Jaffrey's Baby Bok Choy with Chinese Mushrooms; white rice; tofu baked in a marinade of tamari, mirin, oyster sauce, ginger powder and garlic powder.  All I wrote next to the bok choy recipe in my cookbook was "bland!"  Because it was.

​Feb 13
Thank God, I've lost 4 lbs. again after hitting my peak weight a few days ago (seriously, it was the most I've weighed since coming down post-pregnancy 14 years ago, and also just crossed over the line into clinically "overweight" for my age and size).  I guess there was a larger than usual premenstrual "bump," but I'm also trying really hard to back off on the eating.  Anyone reading this food diary over the past couple of months would see that there are very good reasons for my gradual weight gain: holiday food chaos, a change of schedule that makes me more sedentary, and a series of binges that have occurred as I sat here at home, not knowing quite what to do with myself.  Oh, and there was all the baking.  It's not just "water weight."  It's been a while since I did a cleanse or tried a special diet, and those do work, but the honest truth is that I just don't feel like restricting my food choices right now.  I like eating and cooking too much.

Breakfast (eaten late, at 10:15 am-- I slept until 8 today!): the end of the soda bread with butter and jam, half a grapefruit with sugar, half an avocado, little packet of mustard peas.

Lunch: mandarin orange, little packet of mustard peas, crystallized ginger, two fried eggs.

Appetizers (at my sister-in-law's house-- they always put out some kind of extremely filling appetizer(s) before dinner.  Pork is typically involved): Triscuits and club crackers with cheddar cheese and salami.  Not sure how many.  We actually got off easy with these appetizers, since we are often additionally treated to German sausages with honey mustard, and spinach-artichoke dip served in a bread bowl, and/or ham-and-herb-cream-cheese rolls.  While I enjoy these offerings, they do not generally serve the purpose of promoting my appetite.

Dinner: the biggest, fattest pork chop you have ever seen, butterflied and stuffed with a large amount of bread stuffing, topped with (I think) sausage gravy.  Mashed potatoes.  Green beans with lots of delicious garlic.  Two little slices of good baguette with the Amish butter my brother-in-law is so proud of.  Served with hours of tech-and-internet-media talk between my husband, whose birthday was being celebrated, and his nephew.  I did not finish my pork chop, but took the rest home in a Ziploc baggie.  I however declined taking other people's half-eaten pork chops home in Ziploc baggies, which was an option offered to me.

For dessert: my sister-in-law's epic, three-layer German chocolate cake that she bakes every year for her baby brother's birthday, because it is his favorite.  I can't remember how many sticks of butter it has in it, but it is a lot.
In the kitchen, my sister-in-law and I discuss the fact that she barely eats breakfast or lunch, so that her body can accommodate the vast caloric intake demanded by her household's typical dinners. 
​
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 3 regular, 1 decaf, with half and half.  One cup of black tea with milk and sugar.  One glass of red wine, Kirkland brand, which my sister-in-law said was perfectly good, and was.
 
Feb. 14
My darling Valentine, who can never wait past early morning to present any gifts he has for anyone, gave me a frying pan, a lemongrass-colored Fiestaware place setting, and a big box of Godiva chocolates before breakfast this morning. 

Breakfast: the same breakfast quesadilla and home fries I had last week at the Woodside Deli, except this time I managed to only eat half of it and take the rest home in a box!  Victory!  Decaf coffee.

Dinner: I went with a classic Valentine's menu of giant porterhouse steaks (16 oz. each!) with sauteed mushrooms on top, baked potato, and oven-roasted broccoli, with a mini chocolate-sea-salt chess pie shared for dessert.  The porterhouse steaks were cut thinner than is usual, and unfortunately I overcooked them: well done when I was aiming more for medium.  Still very edible, though.  For the third meal in a row (!) I had more on my plate than I could eat, so I saved about 1/3 of the steak and 1/2 the potato for another time.  While I had anticipated that this was a meal I'd be having alone with my husband, my daughter ended up being up being present as well.  She has decided to eat vegetarian for Lent, so she had a grilled cheese sandwich instead of a steak.

Feb. 11
Breakfast: leftover pasty filling, 3 kim bob.  I was starving an hour and a half after eating this breakfast, and afraid today may be shaping up to look like yesterday.

Late morning snack: 3 more kim bob, cup of "Fusion Green and White" tea.  My brain had that low-sugar, cottony feeling.

Lunch: 2 vegetable dumplings, 6 injulmi (3 mugwort, 3 plain).  This felt like just a snack as well, but I imagine it had some significant calories, so I'm trying to have self-restraint.

Late afternoon snack: cottony feeling again.  4 more injulmi (two of each flavor).

Dinner: 6 boiled quail eggs (see yesterday), oven-fried potatoes and red onion, strawberries, and this Savory Soda Bread from Cooking without a Net.  I tried hard to make the quail eggs medium-soft-boiled, as in this post, but just over 3 minutes yielded mostly hard-boiled eggs.  They were still delicious, though, with a richness and indefinable unique taste missing from chicken eggs.  I raved about them while my family looked on indulgently. 

 I really wanted to love the soda bread: first, because it came from a lower-name-recognition blog with writing I enjoyed, and second, because it is dead easy and contains buttermilk, an ingredient I am often looking to use up.  Unfortunately, I found it no tastier (although it is healthier) than my usual, even easier soda bread, which contains basically no ingredients, though I have been known to partially substitute more interesting flours.  Basically it is the same: dense, a bit sticky, with a doughy flavor that lends itself well to butter and honey but is not so good plain (although it does go well with beer, as I discovered in graduate school).  I'm still gonna read the blog, though.
​
Snacks: besides those aforementioned, 4 cups of coffee (2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half), 1 glass cabernet.
​
Feb. 12
Breakfast: leftover soda bread with butter and honey, slice of Pepperidge Farm whole wheat toast with butter, half a grapefruit with a little sugar, little packet of mustard peas.

Lunch: ambasha with butter, 2 white flour tortillas dipped in sour cream and salsa.  Note: I do not believe this, or my breakfast, for that matter, to be a healthy meal.  But, as my daughter lamented this morning while packing her lunch for school, "All there is, is bread!  Look!  Bread (pointing), bread, bread, bread!  We have like four kinds of bread and nothing else!"  While this was not strictly true, it was close enough to true to be unfortunate.

Shopping (Co-op): mini sea salt chocolate chess pie, 3 rolls toilet paper, quart of Brown Cow vanilla yogurt, quart of Brown Cow maple yogurt, broccoli, 3 russet potatoes, 2 avocados, Cabot sharp cheddar, 2 gigantic Porterhouse steaks, 3 lb. bag of mandarin oranges, super-hi-potency probiotic capsules (for my husband), Baby Bella mushrooms, Equal Exchange organic Love Bug coffee, 2 prepared Ethiopian meals, $105.  I spent about $44 on our Valentine's dinner, which seems like a lot, but I calculate that the same meal would cost us around $85 in a restaurant (including service), so the cost isn't really so terrible.  Plus we will not have to fight the crowds.

Dinner: the two prepared Ethiopian meals I bought at the co-op, which consisted of injera, a yellow lentil dish, a greens dish, and a potato-carrot dish.  These were okay, but not great.  We live in a heavily Ethiopian area with many excellent restaurants, and this food was comparatively bland, with sour, slightly stale injera.  It was cheap, however, and I bought it at my neighborhood grocery store, so there's that.  You can't do that in Montana.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  One cup of Pero, with half and half and sugar.  Glass of cabernet in the evening.  2 fun-size green tea KitKats in the evening.

Feb. 8
 Breakfast: 1 mochi strawberry (I'd meant to have two, but ugh), half a leftover pasty (they are huge, and how the hell did I gain 5 lbs. in the past 4 days?). 

Lunch: a few mustard peas left in the dish from the night before, leftover lima beans, mix of yogurt-covered Goji berries and pecan halves (this latter turned out to be an especially good combination).

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's Green Bean and Potato Curry, white rice, tofu the usual way.  Making the green bean curry required first roasting a variety of spices, curry leaf, coconut and rice for an hour to create a Sri Lankan Raw Curry Powder, so there was an initial time investment.  I have curry powder left over, however-- another jar for the overcrowded spice shelf (see photos below).  Then the  vegetables required a fair amount of prep as well.  The very spicy curry ended up rich and tasty, however, though I imagine it would have been even better if I'd remembered to add the lime juice.  Was it worth it for close to two hours worth of prep/cooking time?  Probably not.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  About 1/8 of a sticky bun given to me to try by our kitchen manager: a new product she is baking herself.  Glass of Madeira in the evening.

Feb. 9
Breakfast: leftover pasty filling (I had  lots of extra filling and baked it in a pan), leftover lima beans, leftover green bean and potato curry.

Lunch: leftover tofu and white rice, 4 egg whites plus one whole egg, scrambled, half grapefruit sprinkled with a little sugar.

Dinner: soft white flour tacos with: a mixture of roasted beets, potatoes and carrot; scrambled egg; queso fresco; salad of romaine and cilantro with lime juice dressing; salsa and hot sauce.
​
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  3 pieces of crystallized ginger left over from my daughter's lunchbox.  Glass of Madeira in the evening.
 
Feb. 10
Breakfast: leftover pasty filling, leftover lima beans, leftover green bean and potato curry.  As yesterday.  Lots of little diced potatoes going around.

Lunch (after work, quickly, while regrouping to go pick up my daughter at school): little bowl of leftover roasted beets, carrots & potatoes, topped with queso fresco, salsa, and sour cream.  It wasn't much and I hit an exhaustion wall about 2 1/2 hours later, while standing in JC Penney trying to choose men's undershirts.

Shopping (HMart, after the mall): whole milk, Lactaid 1% milk, HMart prepared fried vegetable dumplings, HMart prepared spicy fried chicken wings, 2 packages green tea KitKats (because my daughter thought they were only available in Japan and was really excited-- I didn't notice till later that they cost $5.99 apiece, and that was the sale price-- they're usually $7.99!), HMart prepared vegetable vermicelli, Kellogg's corn flakes, quart of Chobani strawberry Greek yogurt, black pepper, kim bob, mugwort injulmi, plain injulmi, green tea Pocky (also for my daughter), decaf coffee, 18 speckled quail eggs (my daughter said, half-mockingly, "Mom, are you sure you don't want to buy these quail eggs?"  And I said, "No... I'm not sure.  I think I will."), cage-free brown chicken eggs, $69.

Dinner: An assortment of delicacies from the HMart: 6 kim bob, 4 injulmi (2 mugwort, 2 plain), 2 vegetable dumplings, 1 spicy chicken wing (so sugary that it had what I thought of as a crunchy candy shell).

Snacks: Here is where things got dicey today.  4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  The last decaf was purchased at the Panera at the mall, after hitting the exhaustion wall.  (My daughter asked me to buy her a tea at Teavana instead.  I was shocked that it cost over $5.)  At work, I was fed small amounts of sample baked goods by our kitchen manager, who was trying out some new recipes: a couple of bites of fresh sweet potato doughnut, rolled in granulated sugar, and a few bites of fruit-filled crepe with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.  I had a total of 4 fun-size green tea KitKats, one on the drive home with our groceries, and three more after dinner while watching TV.  1 glass of local cabernet in the evening.  A combination of under-eating wholesome food, no real rest breaks, and the availability of  treats and snacks made this a not particularly great day nutritionally.  This is how every day is for some people, I expect.  Oh, and I had a morsel of "mango chicken" held out to me on a toothpick at the food court in the mall.

Just a short plug for an interesting article.  Mosaic Science, on January 26, published "Why the Calorie is Broken," and proceeded to discuss at length the means by which scientists arrive at caloric estimates for foods, as well as estimates of individual caloric requirements,  and all the ways in which these can be inaccurate or variable.  Some highlights:

• I know I was taught that food calories were determined by setting portions of food afire, then determining the amount of heat produced.  However, scientists eventually recognized that we do not receive 100% available energy from foods, but leave portions of them undigested.  SOOO... nowadays the scientists also burn people's poop after eating the foods, burn that, and subtract the two numbers.  At least, I think I am understanding this correctly, though it is explained more delicately in the article, natch.

Has anyone else noticed that recipes always call for unsalted butter now?  Also: kosher salt.  It's just the past couple of years, but once it struck me it was everywhere.  Of 42 recipes in the September 2015 issue of Bon Appetit mentioning salt, 31 called specifically for kosher salt, only 7 just for "salt," and 4 for flaky sea salt (a trend that is apparently past its prime).  This includes baked goods and sweets.  Of 15 recipes that called for butter, 14 called for unsalted butter, and 1 for clarified butter or ghee.  Zero recipes simply read "butter" (which in cookbook-speak means salted butter, or at least it used to).  

A survey of the last twenty internet recipes I bookmarked to cook later yields 12 mentions of unsalted butter and only 2 of "butter."  There are 9 mentions of kosher salt and 1 of "coarse salt" vs. 7 of "fine sea salt" and 3 just of "salt"-- about even in terms of coarse vs. fine. (Recipes from The New York Times, The Tipsy Baker, Smitten Kitchen, Food & Wine, Ruth Reichl, Andrew Zimmern, Orangette, and TheFauxMartha.)  One thing is clear, however: most people now feel that they have to specify what kind of salt they're talking about.  Waaay back in 2012, everybody's home cooking guru Deb Perelman wrote in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: "You might notice that I call for table salt in most recipes, which might seem odd in an age where salt varieties can take up several grocery store shelves.  I did this for consistency.  Different types, and even brands, of salt have different weights and thus saltiness that they impart to a recipe... I do call for kosher and sea salts in recipes where I feel the texture of the salt improves the final taste."  Well, fast forward a few years, and Smitten Kitchen's online recipes have begun to conform more to fashion: out of 12 recipes I recently bookmarked, 4 call for either kosher or coarse salt, 7 call for fine sea salt (sometimes adding "or table salt"), and only one simply called for table salt.  Oh, Deb!  We count on you to be down-to-earth!  

What does this mean?  Why are regular butter and salt suddenly mean and unacceptable, lacking in grace and precision?  What has occurred, not only between my grandmother's church cookbook and Bon Appetit, but between 2012 and today?  I became very curious about where such recipe trends come from, and how they catch on.

Unfortunately, trends rarely come with a big dose of self-awareness and reflection, so when I tried to research the recent rise in popularity of unsalted butter, what I mostly saw was people talking about how unsalted butter has always been preferable for controlling salt content in dishes, and better because (and I have never heard this discussed before) salt is a preservative, and therefore unsalted butter is fresher.  Ohhkay.  We have always been at war with Eastasia.  The Kitchn does acknowledge that tastes have changed, and offers a reader poll asking which type of butter folks keep on hand (count me in the "both" column; but "unsalted" wins for these probably fairly food-sophisticated readers).  Notably, butter consumption overall hit a 40-year high in 2014, and googling "unsalted butter trendy" will lead you to much discussion of the paleo craze for butter coffee.  Which, if you ask me, is gross.  I would totally try it if I were in Tibet, though.  This story on butter consumption from Associated Milk Producers Inc. does vaguely reference the fact that "though salted butter is the clear preference of consumers, AMPI sales of unsalted quarters have been steadily growing."  They would know.  But I cannot find hard statistics about salted vs. unsalted butter sales anywhere.

​On the other hand, Epicurious declared salted butter to be "back" in 2010.  I am tragically under-hip.

Now, on to salt.  Serious Eats did a great basic article on salt use in recipes in 2013. Key points: "chemically there is virtually no difference between table salt, kosher salt, and fancy sea salt.[...] Dissolve those salts in water side by side, and the differences between them become nearly indistinguishable, just as they are when you use them to season your food."  Yeeessss.  However, when NOT dissolved, texture can matter.  The biggest reason cited here (and elsewhere as well) for using kosher (=coarse) salt preferentially is that it is easier to sprinkle by hand-- easier to pick up with your fingers, and easier to apply evenly.  As for flaky sea salts, the following: 

All this makes a great deal of sense.  So why is Bon Appetit calling for kosher salt in everything from honey cake to dip?  (Both of the above involve premeasured quantities of salt that is destined to dissolve.)  I kept running across mentions in my research of "chefs" preferring kosher salt, or even sometimes "TV chefs," or specifically "American TV chefs."  From Forward.com: "'So much of TV cooking is visual,” [Mort] Satin [VP of science and research for The Salt Institute] reasoned. 'Shaking a little salt shaker could not compete with dipping into a bowl of kosher salt and casting the large, very visible salt crystals across the dish like Toscanini waving his baton across the orchestra. Flair, panache… magic.'"  Is this why I'm supposed to use kosher salt in everything?-- so that I can look dramatic while seasoning my soup?

My guess is that there is a kind of circular action here.  The more recipes call for kosher salt (perhaps for initially valid reasons), and the more people start keeping little pots of kosher salt sitting around their kitchens to sprinkle by hand, the handier it becomes to use kosher salt in your next recipe-- you already bought some!  It's sitting right there!  And if you end up publishing that recipe, "kosher salt" becomes the instruction, whether logically necessary or not.  (Measurements do not translate 1:1 for kosher vs. table salt, so you can't simply convert all written instructions back to the nonspecific "salt.")

But here's another issue I wonder about: iodine.  Ordinary table salt has been fortified with iodine in the U.S. since 1924 (adopting a Swiss practice), nearly eliminating formerly widespread iodine deficiencies that caused developmental disabilities and thyroid problems including goiter.  In the U.S.  Worldwide, iodine deficiency continues to be a very serious public health problem and perhaps "the world’s single most significant preventable cause of brain damage and mental retardation."

But Junkfood Science, even way back in 2006, said: "...over recent decades, Americans are increasingly shunning ordinary table salt; and commercial restaurants, food processors and chefs have abandoned iodized salt in response to consumer concerns it could affect the taste of foods; preferring “natural” sea salts, kosher salts and noniodized salts. Last month, Food Technology reported that this fad, along with attempts to reduce salt intakes, may be the most significant factor leading us to deficiencies again. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys found that from the 1971-1974 to 2001-2002 examinations, iodine excretion in adults dropped from 320 mcg/L to 168 mcg/L — by nearly half — and the frequency of iodine deficiencies in pregnant women jumped from 1% to 7%."  

Another culprit-- probably a more important one-- besides our use of fancy gourmet salts is  the prevalence of processed food; The Salt Institute (admittedly, an industry trade association) also says "Salt used in processed foods is not iodized. Given that people are cooking less at home and buying either restaurant or processed foods, iodine intakes in the U.S. have declined from about 250 μg/day to 157 micrograms/day."  Sorry, what?  Processed foods don't use iodized salt either?  Sign me up for regular use of the everyday carton of boring salt, please.  I'll keep my kosher salt, Maldon sea salt flakes, and coarse Mediterranean sea salt for special occasions and, yes, Bon Appetit recipes.

Feb. 6
Breakfast (6:30 am): leftover red lentils, one leftover avocado cup salad half, two "Oreo" cookies.  The cookies are even better than they were last night-- they have completely come into their own.

Lunch (3:15 pm, after work): side of plain fried rice, side of cold broccoli with sesame oil, 1 fried egg. 

Dinner: (9 pm, at Copper Canyon, after movie-- so late for us!): marinated salmon with mustard sauce, orzo rice, spinach.  Glass of Pinot Grigio.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  Spoonful of white chocolate raspberry milkshake at work.  Bag of potato chips and a whole-milk cappuccino at the movies, which spoiled my dinner.
 
Feb. 7
Breakfast (eaten 11:00 am, at Woodside Deli): "breakfast quesadilla" (quesadilla-shaped tortilla filled with scrambled eggs, cheese, bacon, veggies, and served with sour cream and salsa), home fries, coffee.  The waitress recommended this over their huevos rancheros, on the basis that the quesadilla was a more substantial plate.  It was substantial, and it was good.  But with all the weight I've been putting on, I might have been better off going with the smaller huevos.

Shopping (with husband at Co-op): organic whole milk, organic 1% lactose-free milk, vanilla gelato, Field Day organic wheat squares cereal, $18.

Dinner (my stepson and his girlfriend came over for stepson's birthday): I put out a few cashews and mustard peas as tiny appetizers, and beer, cabernet and madeira were available for drinking.  I had like one cashew and a few mustard peas, a glass of madeira and a glass of cabernet.  Main course was these meat-and-potato pasties, lima beans, and a salad of romaine, butter lettuce, carrot, cilantro, and spring onion, with honey mustard dressing.  I also dipped my pasty in whole-grain mustard.  For dessert, we had wacky cake cupcakes (I had two) and vanilla bean gelato (I skipped the gelato). 

Snacks: 3 cups of additional coffee, 1 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  1 homemade "Oreo" in the mid-morning, because I was so starving waiting for my husband to be ready to go to breakfast. 1 taste-test of a mochi strawberry (from Bon Appetit September issue) that I attempted to make to go with the cupcakes for dessert.  My mochi just didn't turn out right.  I steamed it ten minutes longer than the recipe suggested, but it never turned translucent and still tasted fairly raw, so I think I should have gone on steaming it.  On the plus side, it was not that difficult to wrap the strawberries in the mochi.  On the minus side, between the crappy winter strawberries and the half-raw rice flour, they are nearly inedible.  My husband opined that he liked them.