I'm a vegetarian, but I love vegetables, so I don't know if I would be of much help. Nevertheless, I don't know if this will help, but sometimes a little lemon juice will work as a substitute for salt. It helps to brighten up the taste of things without the sodium. I'm thinking that cheese is pretty high in sodium, at least some cheeses are, like parmesan for instance. As a cheese lover, it's hard to suggest this, but maybe she needs to find something else to eat, or look for low sodium cheeses - if they exist. I don't envy your sister. My father loved all the food that was bad for him, and had a bad heart. He did his best to work with the foods that he was allowed to eat, and even got more interested in cooking, but I know he sorely missed the foods he loved. Of course, when he was sick, I think the restricted diet he was put on may have made him worse, as he was taken off fat other than olive oil, (the good fat) and margarine, which now they know is worse than all other fats. Sally

Oh, yes!! I agree totally with FOAS!! On a new recipe where I'm not sure of how salty the ingredients are, I always scant the salt measure. One can always add salt, but there's no way to subtract it. This is billed as a traditional recipe, so may actually be accurate. The massive amount of salt is likely meant to be a preservative. The intro does say to be careful not to use other salt when using the pepper paste. Next time, you can make it to suit yourself with less salt if you're canning (though check with canning experts to make sure that will be okay) or refrigerating it. Sea Salt is coarse, but there are so many different kinds and sizes of salt that unless the type is very specific (such as table salt or kosher salt), I prefer to weigh it. Unfortunately, most recipes don't have accurate salt measures at all, let alone weights. I prefer when they say salt to taste. That means just enough salt so that it doesn't taste bland. Unless the flavor of the dish is supposed to be salty, you don't want saltiness to be part of the actual flavor--or are using it as a preservative. Unfortunately, for the reasons FOAS mentioned, as well as declines in the physical ability to taste salt that come with overexposure, age, infirmity, etc., too much salt is the current standard.

The last pig roast I went to had the caterers start a fire, in a small pit, about 4:00 AM. They put the pig on a hand operated rottiserie. Acutally, it was a half pig, because I would guess the whole pig to go over 400 lbs. They tended to that pig until about 4:00 that afternoon. Then they took it off the rottisserie and put it on a big platter, along with a couple of sharp knives and let everyone go at it. OMG !!!! They had freshly baked loaves of Italian bread, all sliced up, and slices of sweet onion, (there were other things, but that's all I needed). That pork was so juicy and flavorfull that I actually thought I had died and gone to heaven. Just thinking about that afternoon gets my mouth a-waterin.

This has been an interesting thread to follow, and I would have to say cooking is both an art and a science. In fact, I would say food at its best is a blend of art and science, after being a foods judge at fairs for many years. Leave the salt out of a bread recipe and see what you end up with? Bad science. Add the salt twice, an easy mistake, and see what you end up with? Bad science. Add the salt early and the gluten is harder to develop. Add the salt late in the gluten-development and it's easier to develop and won't require as much kneading. All science! The same goes for adding too much water, flour, sugar (or other sweetener); or flavoring ingredients which can affect the gluten-development in bread when you add too much - like cinnamon and nutmeg when added directly to the dough (this is why we sprinkle cinnamon/sugar on the dough surface for cinnamon rolls, rather than adding large amounts of cinnamon TO the dough. Add too much dairy and you'll end up with loaf with characteristics like - low-volume, poor symmetry, poor cellular structure and texture..... That's pure science. When people have a failed recipe, it's generally not from bad intentions or bad artistic interpretation, it's from bad science. Most modern baked goods are based on a ratio of ingredients. Stick to the common ratio whether you use a scale to weigh each ingredient, cups, pint canning jar, tea/coffee cup or mug... for your measuring tool-of-choice.... So take a moment to marvel at the science. "A standard plain cake has, by measure, 1/3 as much fat as sugar, 2/3 as much milk as sugar; and about 3 times as much flour as liquid." This ratio works whether you are making one small cake, one large cake, or enough batter for 100 cakes. Alter the ratio, such as trying to make a low-fat or low-sugar cake, or changing the type of flour used, and you will need to alter the known science with different ingredients and/or mixing methods. This science is most important when you develop recipes because you need to keep in mind ingredients that are tenderizers (fat and sugar) and those that are structure builders (flour and eggs), along with the other ingredients. Back to measuring flour for bread. This is one area that is completely without a standard for a scale or a dry measure, as all measurements for flour in a bread recipe are just a "good (or bad) guess". Add to that the way each person fills a cup with flour which will get you completely different amounts of flour if you were to weigh the amount on a scale, and the measuring cups themselves have NO standard in manufacturing. This is one area of baking where experience (art) along with science will help improve your bread. Due to the differences in the amount of gluten and moisture in flour, and those differences vary from brand-to-brand, season to season (moisture high during the rainy season and low during a dry winter) as well as from bag-to-bag of the same brand, you need to develop the "feel" (art) for bread dough. Your hands will "know" more about the dough than an exact measure. This is why you need to hold back 1/2-3/4 cup of flour during kneading. You may not need to add all the flour once it has the correct "feel" - and you may use all of the flour and require even more than the recipe called for..... It is also better to err on the side of a loose/wet dough than a hard/stiff dry dough. But I would also encourage EVERYONE to get a scale. There are lots more uses, along with measuring ingredients (especially if you find a recipe that is all weight measurements). It's the best tool in your kitchen when you MUST weigh something. It's far more accurate to measure 4-ounces of shredded cheese on a scale than it is to try to measure an equivalent in a cup - do you pack it tight/loose???? You can scale (weigh) the amount of batter in two cake pans to make sure you have an equal amount of batter in each of them so you have cake layers that are the same size. I even scale dough for burger and hot dog buns so I can adjust the size wanted/needed and make them consistently that same size, as well as the amount of bread per serving (a serving of bread is considered 1-oz.). When buns/rolls/loaves are the same size, they will bake more evenly. A reason to weigh the amount of salt is because of the size of the grains of different salt products. The finer the grind, the more salt grains there will be in a teaspoon (or whatever measure) because they will pack very closely together, while there will be less total salt when you put coarse-grinds of salt in the teaspoon because there are more voids of air between the larger chunks of salt. But the difference will probably not make a really huge difference in this bread recipe, but it IS a science factor you may want to keep in mind. And plenty of bread has successfully been made with plain old iodized table salt - even though I personally stopped using it many decades ago. So many things are choices, and neither totally right or totally wrong. -Grainlady