What's in a name?

I figured we should talk about the name of this blog. So, what is in a name? In this case, actually, not much. For those of you who aren’t trying to start up a food blog, you should know that a billion of them already exist. And so, in naming them, one runs into a whole bunch of plagiarism-related roadblocks: all of the good ones, it seems, are already taken. By good, of course, I mean ones that succinctly and creatively sum up what your blog’s niche is. Rue le Sel, I realize, does neither. At the end of the day, I needed to just plop a heading on my blog, and hope that people would stay long enough to let me explain.

I think Rue le Sel sounds nice. That’s just about the long and short of it. In a large nutshell, I wanted to communicate that I lean more towards the savory side of the culinary world; I can appreciate the sugary goodness of desserts (but then again, who can’t?), but what fascinates me more is how to cook savory food, eventually without recipes. Baking, to me, means too much measuring, not enough spontaneity, and too much putting-in-the-oven-and-leaving.

I refuse to write off dessert-making entirely, and you might see some of that on here; I do, after all, have a really great crème brulee in my repertoire. And as far as putting in the oven and leaving, there will certainly be braising. But still, my biggest attraction is the savory.

For some reason or another, all of this made me think of the word salt. Salt equals savory. Mostly. Unless you’re making the delicious little caramel truffles we serve at the Still River Café. I could’ve just called my blog Salt, but I bet that one is already taken. A Pinch of Salt was. I thought – Salt Box sounded too much like my blog would concern the architectural structures of colonial houses. Salt….Avenue? Yes, I decided, I’d like to go that direction. Then I put it in French. Why? Because romance languages make everything sound better, we can all agree. You would think that since I don’t speak a lick of French, that I would perhaps stay in my native language. But nope, I did it anyway. And I don’t even think the translation is all that correct – roughly, it comes out more like “street the salt.” But there you go, that’s all I’ve got. It sounds nice, and no one else has used it.