Make your own sea salt!

After I read this in Saveur (my favorite food/wine/travel magazine), I was dying to try it.  Who knew it was so simple to harvest your own sea salt, and what better way to remember your travels than to bring home something edible and unique that you and everyone you give to will actually use?

Gotta love Hipstamatic.  It does the job when I'm too lazy to break out the big guns.

T and I tried it out when we were in Hawaii.  Here's how we did it:

1.  Took a rubbermaid pitcher with us when we went snorkeling in Honaunau Bay (our fave spot to snorkel on the Big Island)
2.  Filled pitcher with moving water (vs. stagnant water)
3.  Emptied out pitcher in a big pot and boiled it for as long as it took for all the water to go away, and for a nice layer of salt to show up at the bottom.  I think it was a couple hours.

You can also let it dehydrate naturally, which is supposed to produce prettier, bigger crystals.  Of course, T and I left the task to the last day of our trip, and we were in a hurry, so we boiled it off instead.  We still got nice salt.  It is very salty salt, if you can have such a thing.  Our only regret is that we didn't do this sooner on our trip so we could have had more salt to bring back!  We doubted it was so simple, so we procrastinated.  But I can tell you now, it really is as simple as boiling sea water.

We now vow to do this everywhere we go where there's (clean) ocean water nearby. 

I got the little brown bottles from a sidewalk sale a long time ago, not knowing what I would use them for.  Turned out they were perfect for salt, even though it took me forever to find the right cork stoppers for them (Michael's really does have everything). 

Let me know if you guys try this out!