Salt to taste

A phrase you will come across frequently in most recipes. The amount of salt to be added is never specified as it varies from dish to dish or person to person.

I am not really a fan of salt so I never add too much to the dishes I cook. The last time I cooked a pot of chicken curry for my friends, one of them tasted it and promptly proceeded to pour in the contents of half a bottle of soy sauce. Yes, he’s THAT annoying but that’s not my point here. 

Adding salt to a dish is a bit like what Feng Shui practitioners do.

A good cook tastes a dish first before adding the salt. If a dish is already too salty, you wouldn’t add more salt to it. Instead you’d be looking at adding cream or even more water to take off the edge. But if there’s very little taste, you would up the salt content by, oh, I don’t know, pouring in some soy sauce perhaps.

Houses and people are the same. Some houses are stubborn – people living in such houses would find it hard to introduce changes in their life. Other houses are too yang – those living here always complain that life is never still. Something is always happening. While you would try and stir things up in the former, you’d want to create a more settled energy for the latter property.

Some people are hot-tempered. You don’t want them sleeping in a red-coloured room which is going to only add to the fire that is already in their charts. Some are just lazy and it’s important that their houses are not overly damp or dark which will hardly serve to energize them.

Feng Shui, like cooking is an active almost alchemistic (is there such a word?) process. You take what you have and you try and balance it, keeping in mind what you are trying to achieve. Which is why when I read certain books and they say things like to get a husband put a rose quartz crystal near your bed stand as you sleep or to get a windfall, ring a bell three times around your work area, it troubles me.

No one would ever say for the perfect chicken stew, always put in 3 tablespoons of salt because it just doesn’t work that way. You need to taste the dish, understand it and then add just the right amount of salt to taste.

What's Feng Shui got to do with Mickey Mouse?

Did you know that the animators who created Mickey Mouse deliberately put gloves on his hands? This was to prevent children from being turned off / scared by his claws. He is a mouse after all and mice do have sharp little claws. Its really hard to imagine soft loveable Mickey with these harsh appendages. 

Mickey Mouse image is copyright of Disney

When we see claws, we think vermin or even evil - think of the fingers of the wicked witch. Sharpness and pointedness make us uneasy and we associate it with unsavoury elements. Even the nose of the witch is ... you guessed it, sharp and pointed. It's almost like we have an unconscious aversion to anything sharp and pointy and we've used these elements to signify evil.

It could be because we know sharp, claw-like objects have the ability to injure us and over the years we have developed a uncanny ability to be distrustful of anyone or anything with these features. 

And this is where Feng Shui comes in. One of the key principle of Feng Shui is always to ensure that no sharp corners or objects are pointing right at you as you sleep or work. Think of them of knives being pointed at you. Some people might say that these things don't affect you but I think our body responds to these features without us even being aware of it. There might be a feeling of unease, not being able to concentrate or even disturbed sleep. Sometimes this can even manifest as illness and that could easily be a result of your body being in a heightened state of alert all the time without you even knowing about it. Perhaps, that's why most of us while thinking the Gherkin is cool, feel uneasy about The Shard. There's just something in us that makes us mistrust these shapes. 

So watch out for these corners. Ensure nothing like that is aimed towards you while you need to rest or concentrate fully. If you can't move out the way, try and shield them with plants or put a large vase of water with cut plants to provide some barrier.