Making Flavor & Friends Camping with Hepp’s Salts

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Summer isn’t officially inaugurated until a camping trip happens.  A simplified camping trip is best this year, I thought, and the less supplies the better.  Simple doesn’t mean sacrificing flavor however.  To carry the lightest load while making the most in flavor I brought along a small packet of Hepp’s Salt on this summer's camping trip. 

Artisanal Salt?  Really?

I first discovered Hepp’s Salt at the ArtisanalLA show this spring.  "Artisanal salt? Really?" was my first thought when approaching their booth. I am from the Midwest.  Salt is salt.  Then I spoke to the owners, became surprisingly engrossed in the story of salt, their salt in particular, and before I knew it I was walking out with pink Aussie salt, citrus salt, and something I tend to keep under lock and key, the BLACK TRUFFLE SALT.  Soon I was showing the salts off to students at my Radical Cooks cooking classes and surreptitiously sneaking a flake or two from the packets while cooking at home.  When it came time to pack for our camping trip, tucking away a bag of pink Aussie Flake salt in the camping bin seemed the right thing to do. 

Making Flavor and Friends

What I expected when bringing the salt was flavor.  It did not disappoint.  Sprinkled over sautéed collard greens, bacon, and egg, sunny-side up, camping turned “glamping” and a delectable outdoor dining experience was had.  What I didn’t expect was the "value add" in this little packet. 

Turned out my simplified packing did not go over well with the children who couldn’t understand why I packed salt but no firewood.  Sadly, they had not even a small fire to roast marshmallows.  Actually, I never packed the marshmallows either.  Maybe we looked a little sad sitting around our firepit-sans-fire.  For as the sun was setting on our pathetic yet simple campsite a neighboring camper happened by.  He invited us over for wine and cheese and, to my children’s delight, a warm fire with s’mores. 

Soon the stars were out and we were warm, fed, and full.  Thanks to his kindness I spent the evening around a borrowed fire, sipping borrowed wine, and nibbling borrowed gourmet cheese.  "Simple living, be damned," I thought, accepting a refill in my plastic cup.   

Worth My Hepp’s Salt

Historically, salt not only created and destroyed empires and built trade routes but it was also a symbol of well-wishing.  “Salt, so your life shall always have flavor” the saying goes when given as a housewarming gift.  The following morning I decided our neighboring camper was worth my salt, my Hepp’s salt, in particular.   In gratitude, I gave him my packet of Aussie pink salt.  And with a little bit of salt new friends were made and the salt trade revitalized one weekend along the California Pacific Coast. 

HEPP’S Salt Co. states on their website they were created with a mission to reinvent the way people think about salt. Truthfully, I would have never considered giving our neighbor a shaker of Morton’s for there is no real value in such an item.  Salt is salt.  Yet my Aussie pink salt had value, enough so that it pained me a little to part with it.  Mission accomplished Hepp's Salt.  You have reinvented the way this "salt of the earth" Midwestern girl now thinks about her sodium intake.  

To learn more and rethink the salt shaker experience yourself, check out the Hepps Salt Co. website at:  http://www.heppssalt.com/.