Salt should be unlocked. It keeps locking itself again, but if you need salt, then send trades.
I will generally accept trades for any ingredient I have more then 100 of. Please don't send me useless stuff as a trade though. For example, I have over 100 beef...you send me a trade for it, but want to trade me salt for the beef. Not only do I not need salt, I have over 250 of them. Don't feel like your trade has to be "worthy", just use a little common sense. :)
Thought I'd make a simple page to address trades. :)
I occasionally get trades, or messages asking if I'm really not trading. The cranky part of me always wants to say something like, "Great, I post free ingredients and money, and now they want MY stuff too!". But then I take a deep breath and remember what a pain in the butt it is to get ingredients in this game, and that most people aren't greedy, they're just trying to level up all those dishes.
99% of the time I'm not trading. I send some of the ings over to my main account so I can level stuff also. Eventually as I have time, I'll double and triple check and make sure I don't need something, and then I'll unlock the item. I'll make sure to tell people when I do this, so you don't have to keep checking.
The main reason is that its just not easy to trade. Depending on the day, it can take from 30mins-2hours to post one group of 5 ingredients. That doesn't include distractions in the home. Then I try and collect crates from my wall, and get all my gifts. At this point I generally go over to my account and "play". :) Trades from several hundred people would quickly consume several hours a day, and there's no real fair method. I can't keep track and tell people, only 3 trades a day, or some such number...the paperwork would make me pull my hair out. First come first server would only work assuming PlayFish lists them in my box in the order you requested them. And what about the one or two people that would ruin it for all? The guy that asks for all my cheese in exchange for leeks, and he's even already maxed cheese dishes, he's just hoping to trade them to someone for cash items.
So it seems much easier to me to just not trade. So if you send a trade, and I ignore it, or don't answer you about a trade, its nothing personal, I just don't have the time, or the ability to manage them.
Thanks everyone! :)
CC