SPRINKLE SPRINKLE LITTLE JAR

I went to Dollar Tree last week. I purchase things like bar soap, body washes, and household cleaning stuff. Greeting cards are great buys, too. Everything’s a buck! Sometimes, I take my mother because she always finds deals on things whether she needs them or not, and it’s those little pleasures that make life more fun, even when she buys glittery pre-teen nail polish she ends up detesting.

This is a relatively new store located in Longwood, FL. It’s a little bigger than the one I usually go to, so it’s better stocked. The manager described it as a showcase store. Usually, I saunter down each aisle, basket in hand, just to make sure I don’t miss out on anything new. On one of those aisles, I found a couple of shelves stocked with spices. When it comes to dollar store spices, I pretty much treat them the same way I treat dollar store vitamins and supplements, like B-12 and fish oil. Quite simply, I don’t buy them. Why not? Because I don’t trust the source – and I don’t know how fresh and pure any of it is.

While perusing those “exotic” spices, I stumbled upon a container of kosher salt. I don’t know what prompted me to pick it up because I never put salt on anything. Nope, no sprinkling for me. Never. Perhaps, it was the large and impressive Star of David emblazened on the front label. Whatever the reason, I simply picked it up out of curiosity and probably because of one small detail that caught my eye, somewhere around the far left corner of my peripheral vision.

Upon careful examination of the container and label, I saw that it contained one simple ingredient: Salt. That’s reassuring. It means the salt, of the common rock salt variety, is just what the label proclaims it to be. Sodium chloride. Halite. NaCl. I don’t know if I have to write a short history of where salt comes from, but it’s safe to say that salt mines (where most of it originates) are in abundance throughout the world, and many of the deposits are millions of years old. Maybe older.

That leads me to a very simple question. Please take a look at the image I provided because it’s this one little detail that caught my eye. What you see is the exact container I picked up to examine. Note what its only ingredient is. Nothing more. Ancient salt extracted from a plentiful source beneath the ground. Pure and white. For something that’s millions of years old, why is there an expiration date stamped on the bottle? Best by 03/10/20. Are you kidding me???