Ketchup, please

When Rose first told me about her project involving 100 tomato plants, my initial reaction was "yuck! tomatoes!" I hate tomatoes. I hate them so much, I don't even like tomato sauce. It's not the flavor of tomato that bothers me, it's the texture. The skin and the seeds and the slimy-ness. Yuck! It's gross just thinking about it. I know it doesn't make much sense, but I like other foods with similar textures, like plums and nectarines are slimy and have similar skin. And I don't mind raspberry seeds or pomegranate seeds. But something about those tomatoes, I just can't bear it.

Being from Pittsburgh, home of Heinz, I do love ketchup. It doesn't have the seeds or the skin. I put ketchup on everything. All of the traditional things, hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries. I don't like mustard, so I've got to have the red stuff. When I was younger, and sometimes still, I'd put ketchup on steak. Most people think I'm ruining the steak, but maybe the steak is ruining my ketchup! I also would put ketchup on tacos. I didn't like how spicy taco sauce was, but ketchup was perfect. As I grew up, my tastes changed and I do use the traditional taco sauce now. However, recently, I had run out of it, and put ketchup on a taco, and I'll admit, it was pretty nasty. But if I were stuck on a deserted island, ketchup would definitely be the condiment I'd take with me.

And it has to be Heinz. To anyone in Pittsburgh, Hunts is blasphemy. I've lived in New York, and people there don't believe me when I tell them there's a difference between Hunts and Heinz, but seriously, there is. Also, when I lived in London, many of the pubs served strange brands of ketchup, and I couldn't even eat it. It was always disappointing to eat "chips" with just salt, but I really had no choice. The rare days you'd find a place with Heinz was a day to celebrate. The rumors are true, a lot of the food is bad in England, and it starts and ends with the ketchup.

My niece is almost 2 years old, and already she can tell you the importance of ketchup. Okay, maybe she just thinks it's fun to dip all of her food in sauce, but still, she puts ketchup on everything. She recently dipped pineapple in ketchup and ate it, and seemed to like it. At this point, she pretty much won't eat anything without "dippy". She'll chant "dippy" until you give her something, anything, to dip into. Sometimes she won't even eat her food, but she'll just use it as a scoop to eat the dip.

But getting back to tomatoes. Besides ketchup, the only other exception I'll enjoy is tomato soup, but only if it's strained completely smooth. I especially like it with basil. (The best way to make a can of tomato soup is to add a can of milk instead of water, and then add some basil...instant improvement on canned soup).

That's it. Ketchup and Soup. I don't like tomato sauce of any kind, marinara, meat sauce, red sauce, none of it. It's all gross. Yes, this also means I don't like pizza. And I'm a quarter Italian! I'll eat it when it's unavoidable, but I'll work around the sauce as much as I can. Some pizza is better than others, but overall, I'd prefer white. Or, the new trend is buffalo chicken pizza or bbq pizza, and that is fantastic.

So Rose gave me a tomato plant. And, I'm a bit disdainful about the plant, because I hate tomatoes. But, like any good mother, I'll do everything I can to bring out the best qualities of my tomatoes....and their best qualities are found in ketchup. So, that's my goal, to turn my little tomato plant into enough tomatoes to make ketchup. I've never made ketchup before, and I don't know anyone who ever has (why would you when Heinz is around?), but I'm gonna try. If nothing else, I know I can turn it into dippy for my niece. I just hope she doesn't refine her palate before then.