Salt-Free is hard

Let me be the first to admit how much I loooooooathe food blogs.
The irony of that is not lost on me here, tell me I’m not alone here?
There is nothing that gets my goat more than having to read someones life story just to get to a recipe. I find Pinterest particularly rife with food blogs, but the recipes on them are usually pretty delicious.
Before I try a recipe I’ve pulled from online, I usually take the time to read through comment sections as well to see if they worked, and what people added, omitted, or changed.
My background knowledge with Pinterest and comment sections has made searching for Diabetic recipes a little easier, because I kind of know how to weed through them now.
So this week, discussing what to make for dinner with Spare Parts, she suggests that we try to use whats available in the house to make chicken soup.
Drumsticks? Check. Carrots? Check. Onions? Check. Celery? Check. Rice? Check. Chicken bouillon? Big fat check! Its very rare that I can put together a meal that isn’t Kraft Dinner without requiring at least one trip to the grocery store.
So I proceed to start making the age old family recipe of chicken soup. Did not think I would need technology for this recipe at all.
But then, reading the bouillon nutritional ingredients, I realized that there is a lot of sodium in it. Added salt (sodium) has become the enemy in our house.
Cue technology:

Trusty ole Google.
One of the search results returned a page from the British Heart Foundation with a complete list of herb and spice substitutions for salt. Bingo!!
This list is very helpful and one I have bookmarked, but sadly I did not have any of the spices it suggested on hand. Again, trying to avoid a trip to the grocery store halfway through cooking dinner. Back to google. I definitely needed that salt flavour to add to my soup because at that point it was looking and tasting a lot like dishwater.
Stack Exchange ended up being my saviour. It was neither a food blog, nor a recipe site. Rather, it is a discussion board! Discussion boards are like comment sections, but usually aren’t accompanied by other content such as a blog. Typically you will see a question posed or a topic of discussion where users are free to contribute. I like discussion boards. There usually isn’t a ton of media in them, and you can tell which ideas might be good or bad depending how how they’ve been voted upwards or downwards. Democracy at its finest. There are some pretty good suggestions in this thread but it was the one mentioning lemon juice that caught my eye. I know enough about cooking to know that lemon and chicken are complimentary flavours to each other, so by George, this just might work!
Boy Howdy, let me tell you, lemon juice is an excellent substitute for salt in chicken soup!
I had to give myself a pat on the back for 1: successfully avoiding a food blog for another day, and 2: salvaging my dishwater soup while keeping it diabetic friendly and 3: reaffirming my faith in discussion boards.
The lesson here? Shop around without leaving the house when it comes to cooking! 🙂