Oh... yeah, if you're not doing moderation it's a problem. When I use bullion it's usually even less amounts than the dish calls for salt -- the intent is to add flavor, not add food to the bullion. Also yeah, I cook without it plenty, especially when I'm cooking for someone else, heh. And it is a big difference! Try it some time, and you'll find eating 4-7 different things over the course of a week repeatedly is a goddamn hell of a lot of a difference compared to eating the same thing every day of the week for a while, ahaha. A little bit of variation really does help a
lot with that sort of thing.
Though yeah, Rol, you can do that. Cooking with alcohol to varying degrees is fairly common -- it usually burns away most of the poison and just leaves the taste. I prefer to just use whatever the alcohol was made from without the brainkillers, m'self (it usually tastes better that way
), but it's a thing. Beer bread (you can also use sodas and stuff for that, which can be pretty amazing), wine's common for marinades, beer battered whatever, etc., and so forth.
Also would totally recommend mixing grains occasionally -- you can start with something simple, like adding croutons (or ghetto croutons, which is just chopped up toast :V) to rice or somethin', and then see what else works for you. I throw rice into a bunch of other stuff, and a bunch of other stuff into rice, heh, just as an example. Simply throwing together two things you like to eat is one of the easiest ways to start experimenting with what you cook, ha!