My mother was a chef, and a great cook. Made a lot of money. Cooked for her family with salt. Everything was from the garden: "true and clean".

It's a scientific fact: we are salt. We are salty. If you put unsalted food on your tongue, you are saltier than the food. It takes your salt and gives you water. It's osmosis. As you know, water has no flavor.

The theory of salting food is this: maintain the salt equilibrium. Nobody takes salt: you or the food. For example: boiling squid. You cook it quick - just like that. But the water must be as salty as the ocean, or else the squid loses salt. The squid is perfect as it is. Everything is perfect. Everything nature gives you is perfect. People should try not to adulterate it, hopefully. That's what we do: we manipulate things; we take the wood and make a table {bangs on coffee table}. No other thing on earth does that. Only us.

We cook out of instinct. I guess we figured out that if you don't kick out of instinct, it'll kick you.

When I cook, I use salt from a dish. It can't be a shaker. It's too small to see with your naked eye. You can pour half as much as you need, or four times as much, and you can't see the difference. You can only tell with your fingers. {Interjects with, "I'm so glad you're doing this. It's so nice to talk about me!"}

You see, I can't see very well. I don't drive a car. I moved here {Boston, Massachusetts, USA} 'cause I can't drive a car. I can't pass the eye test. I'm basically blind.

I used to work for this really high profile restaurant. I won't name it. I don't believe in spiteful slamming. But I was fired. Because of my eyesight. I thought at first, "Maybe they're right. Maybe I can't see well enough to cook". But now I know it was personal politics. That's how life works. That's why you didn't vote for Bill Weld in this last election. {The notetaker present had previously admitted to voting for John Kerrey for US Senate only because of a strong personal dislike for his competitor, Bill Weld, sitting governor of the Commonwealth. Massachusetts is a Commonwealth, not a state. Can you name the other two?} It's because of how you feel.

What people need to do is get enough salt in their diet. Then we'd all be happy. I think my mother's cooking is the best in the world. Only me, my brother, my sister, and my father know this. No one else ever will, even though she was a chef. What she did for us was different than what she did for everyone else. It's like that with families.

If you know things in a nascent state, while you are still unconscious, you will see that you knew truth like it really is: on a blank slate. That's it. What else can you do? Motherly love: she knows. That always works on me.

{Eerily, the CD playing injects these Paul McCartney lyrics into this space in the conversation: "Step inside love / Come in out of the cold and kiss me goodnight."}

These things are so personal. How do you share them with a group? You can't even share them with friends? It's like shitting. No - like masturbating. You can't do that in front of friends (most of the time) - everyone would laugh at you. Maybe that's what makes friends - that you don't care if they laugh at you.

So -- eat salt with your food. It's good for you.