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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Without both water and salt, cells could not get nourishment and would die of dehydration.
Salt is a chemical term for a substance produced by the reaction of an acid with a base. When sodium, an unstable metal that can suddenly burst into flame, reacts with a deadly poisonous gas known as chlorine, it becomes the staple food sodium chloride, NaCl, from the only family of rocks eaten by humans.
Baby formula contains three salts: magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, and sodium chloride.
Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history.
If a man uses his thumb in serving salt, his children will die, his little finger will cause poverty, and use of the index finger will cause him to become a murderer.
the Chinese originated many of the pivotal creations of history, including papermaking, printing, gunpowder, and the compass.
Without salt, yeast forms, and the fermentation process leads to alcohol rather than pickles.
Zhacai is made with salt instead of brine, alternating layers of vegetables with layers of salt crystals.
A more complicated technique, involving salt, ash, lye, and tea, produces the “1,000-year-old egg.”
Typical of the Chinese love of poetic hyperbole, 1,000-year-old eggs take about 100 days to make, and will keep for another 100 days, though the yolk is then a bit green and the smell is strong.
Li Bing’s existence is well documented. His most extraordinary accomplishment was the building of the first dam, which still functions in modernized form.
With the dam still operating, the Sichuan plains remain an agricultural center today.
