Why must the spice flow?

About two years ago, my doctor informed me that my weight and blood pressure were too high.  He asked me to lose weight and to start going low sodium.  This is frightening to hear, because most of us associate that with bland, terrible food.

You have been LIED to!!!!!!!

After a few weeks of buying really awful low salt food, I realized that the prepared food I'd been buying was not actually low in salt.  It was just LESS salty than what I was used to.  And since the food was crap to begin with, using less salt did NOT help.  I realized there was only one choice.  I had to do the thing every bachelor fears most: I had to learn to cook.

I had very little luck in cooking good food, so my sister asked what spices I was using.  I said I didn't have many so she dragged me to the store and I dropped about $60 on spices.  This changed EV-ER-Y-THING.

Suddenly I was privy to an enchanting new world.  Like magical flavor elves were doing a happy dance on my taste buds.  With rainbows.  All of these spices which I had previously feared as being too confusing, exotic and esoteric to use in my daily life made sense.  I thought of seasoning as salt with some other mild flavor, like "movie theater butter".  No more.  I saw the light.  I was liberated.

While I am by no means an authority, I now love spices.  I do a little reading from time to time and enjoy trying new ones both on their own and in a recipe.  A trip to the spice shop is exciting.  Even reading the poetic descriptions of common things like ordinary black pepper is fun at times.  I feel like a mad alchemist transmuting brownish powders into flavor spells.

Probably the most important revelation was how little salt I really need in my food.  Salt is cheap and easy and makes food addictive so most companies (and modern chefs, I'm sad to say) prefer over-salting food.  Seasonings give food amazing twists and turns.  They give it subtlety and complexity that, here in good ol' 'murca, we just don't embrace.

THROW OFF YOUR SALTY SHACKLES!!!
EMBRACE THE SPICE!!!
THE SPICE MUST FLOW!!!