Last Sunday I went for breakfast at the cafeteria called “Ristorante Tridente”. I asked for a cappuccino and since I’ve ordered it a few days in a row I knew that the coffee needed sugar. In Puerto Rico, we call coffee “pulla” (pronounced pooja), because it is not the best coffee experience that you have. It is an expression used to describe coffee that is bitter or strong.

After I swapped my card in with the cashier, I noticed this big jar with something white on it. I approached the jar and I took it in my hands and noticed that the powder had the same texture as sugar. The bottle did not have any sign on it. I assumed that the powder was sugar because it had the same texture as the one that my aunt has back home in Puerto Rico. Therefore, I picked up the jar and poured some of its contents into the palm of my hand.  I tasted it just to be sure. I expected it to have a sweet sensation in my mouth so I took just enough. But to my surprise, it was salt. I felt that I just had a glass of seawater. This is not exactly the taste I was looking forward to having in the morning.

It was smart that I tasted it before I poured some of it into my cappuccino. There are also experiments to help distinguish between both of them. I guess that even products in their most simple form can have different textures than what we are accustomed to and in most of the cases it is better to test to determine if what you see is what you really want.