{"id":20,"date":"2009-07-31T20:31:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T01:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/?p=20"},"modified":"2009-07-31T20:31:50","modified_gmt":"2009-08-01T01:31:50","slug":"catchup-on-ketchup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"Catchup on ketchup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-19\" title=\"HeinzBottle\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/HeinzBottle.jpg\" alt=\"HeinzBottle\" width=\"59\" height=\"181\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I enjoy ketchup.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t go so far as to put it on my eggs at breakfast or use it to restore hair growth, but I like it quite a bit, nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>I like it with french fries, burgers, hot dogs, burgers and sometimes I even put some on my burger.\u00a0 Of course Heinz is the best brand.\u00a0 I say \u201cof course\u201d because I know Heinz is the best and if you disagree, you&#8217;re simply wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Being a tomato-based product, I am not a fan of ketchup being saved, stored or marketed in plastic containers.\u00a0 I&#8217;m suspicious enough of the evils that lurk in the Rubbermaid&#8230;add the acid of tomatoes and you&#8217;re just asking for children with gills.\u00a0 So I want my sauce in glass.<\/p>\n<p>But this peeve is not about plastic bottles (well, one paragraph of it was), but about how ketchup gets disrespected in public eateries.<\/p>\n<p>Almost any other food item that is not packaged for single-use is protected in the back rooms and\/or refrigerated.\u00a0 Want some <em>A-1 Steak Sauce<\/em> for your dead bovine?\u00a0 You have to ask for it and after clearance has been obtained from the proper authorities, and the <strong>Condiment Vault<\/strong> has been opened by those two Marines standing in the corner, you are allowed to ruin your steak (it is a free country after all).<\/p>\n<p>Even mustard, ketchup&#8217;s yellow cousin who always got picked last for games of Red Rover in the fifth grade, is more often than not in protected territory.<\/p>\n<p>But ketchup?\u00a0 It&#8217;s just sits out on tables.\u00a0 All the time.\u00a0 Without refrigeration.\u00a0 Open to defilement by kids&#8217; plague-dripping fingers, puppies and other close-to-the-ground threats.\u00a0 I mean, drive by your favorite restaurant at 3 a.m. while making an emergency run to the 7-Eleven for some Ben &amp; Jerry&#8217;s, and you&#8217;ll be able to see bottles of ketchup standing guard in the lonely dining room.\u00a0 Bacteria grow.\u00a0 The sour bite of spoilage swims through the once-divine topping.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me want to cry.<\/p>\n<p>Not only is this excellent and necessary food addition spoiled, causing unknown incidents of jay-walking and improper brushing technique, but it is a tremendous waste.\u00a0 And I hate to see food wasted&#8230;even if it&#8217;s going to MY waist.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re thinking that must be the end, right?\u00a0 What more could Mr. Cranky want to whine about on this topic?\u00a0 Well, I&#8217;ll tell you what!!!\u00a0\u00a0 It&#8217;s the practice of some disreputable public eating establishments to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">refill<\/span> ketchup bottles!<\/p>\n<p>Yep, they do!\u00a0 I hope you didn&#8217;t just hurl on your keyboard, because I ain&#8217;t cleaning that mess.\u00a0 In your head you&#8217;re probably trying to come to grips with this horrifying concept.\u00a0 I suspect you&#8217;ve created the mental picture of fresh and new bottles of ketchup being poured into nearly-defunct bottles.\u00a0 But, no surprise here, you&#8217;d be wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what they do:\u00a0 they gather all of the ketchup bottles that are in danger of being empty and they&#8230;CONSOLIDATE them!\u00a0 Ketchups of varying vintages, some going back as far as the days of the rotary telephone, are mixed, co-mingled and, I can&#8217;t go on&#8230;.\u00a0 It&#8217;s simply too horrific.<\/p>\n<p>I am too lazy to do the research, but I strongly believe that this is against some sort of code, law or proclamation.\u00a0 I mean, we have laws to protect us from stuff like this, don&#8217;t we?\u00a0 I&#8217;m not allowed to sell gasoline labeled as milk, why should my life and happiness be put at risk by this dangerous ketchup cocktail?<\/p>\n<p>But even if there is no law, common sense should prevent such atrocities!\u00a0 But then on some days, (such as those when I witness the buggered mouth of a refilled ketchup bottle), I believe that I am the only one left with any sense.\u00a0 Common or otherwise.<\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I enjoy ketchup.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t go so far as to put it on my eggs at breakfast or use it to restore hair growth, but I like it quite a bit, nonetheless. I like it with french fries, burgers, hot dogs, burgers and sometimes I even put some on my burger.\u00a0 Of course Heinz is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1153,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/1153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaronkuehn.net\/tol\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}