My ex used to put salt on absolutely everything, including both my cooking and her own. She was initially quite apologetic about salting food I'd prepared, on the basis that I might consider it an insult to my cooking. In fact I hadn't, because I'd already noticed that she plentifully salted her own cooking too and decided that she must simply like salt.
It's quite startling how many possible kinds of insult it's possible to read into behaviour around condiments! I can see the possible insult in salting before you taste here, but on the other hand, surely it's just as possible to argue in the other direction: if I put salt on first, it's probably just because I like salt, but if I try the food and then salt it heavily then it must be a comment on how it tastes. I think avoiding overthinking this sort of thing in the first place is likely to be the only way to remain relaxed...
(I'm reminded of the bit in Babylon 5 where Delenn takes one bite of the meal Sheridan has ineptly cooked her, and then displays her polished diplomacy skills by remarking on a painting on the wall behind Sheridan, causing him to turn round to look at it and hence not notice her applying a massive dose of condiments :-)
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Date: 2013-01-22 02:02 pm (UTC)It's quite startling how many possible kinds of insult it's possible to read into behaviour around condiments! I can see the possible insult in salting before you taste here, but on the other hand, surely it's just as possible to argue in the other direction: if I put salt on first, it's probably just because I like salt, but if I try the food and then salt it heavily then it must be a comment on how it tastes. I think avoiding overthinking this sort of thing in the first place is likely to be the only way to remain relaxed...
(I'm reminded of the bit in Babylon 5 where Delenn takes one bite of the meal Sheridan has ineptly cooked her, and then displays her polished diplomacy skills by remarking on a painting on the wall behind Sheridan, causing him to turn round to look at it and hence not notice her applying a massive dose of condiments :-)