You Can't Beat the Ketchup

The ritual of exchanging dollars for goods and services can be an engaging, if not expensive, process. If one cares (and many dimwitted sloths do not), focusing on the tiny elemental things can prove to be entertaining. In this case, the tiny elemental thing I am referring to is the art of looking into people's carriages and their choices of food in a grocery store.

Often I find myself doing this. Of course, their reactions are also an exquisite experience to enjoy. They look upon you like the Yellow Dwarf. It is quite, how shall I put it, delightful. Besides, it should be me staring back in horror after noticing the utter junk and scrap people consume.

This, however, is not the purpose of this note. It was to reveal something I observed.

I watched an Asian couple feeding their little toddler ketchup. No french (or freedom) fries, no hot dog (pronounced hut dug here in Montreal), no nothing. Just ketchup. The kid was loving it. If she was any older she would have smeared it all over her body smothering herself in this fabulous tasting antioxidant tomato paste. Though, her love of ketchup is not that surprising given that Asians have had their variation of it for centuries. Still.

Ironically, Italians did not invent ketchup. Many cultures had a hand in it. Of course, like many things, ketchup (aka catsup, cackchop, kitsip and in its original form ketsiap) has a long red coloured history that pre-dates Heinz and his version introduced in 1876. But it is his (he was of German background) recipe that has remained and is associated with the legend that is the modern ketchup.

Why do these notes go longer than they have to? Anyway, it never ceases to amaze me how not even the power of a proud culinary society could deny their children the omnipotent ketchup. Everything about North American culture attracts everyone. But culture is sometimes no match for marketing and advertising masters.

This was just an observation of a snapshot into another family's life in a grocery store. You could have easily replaced that Asian couple with a European, Native, anything. My conclusion during this rather pointless exercise? You just can't beat the ketchup when you come to our shores.