Ketchup

Ketchup lovers, the news is good.Sort of.The thicker the ketchup, the better you like it, market researchers have long known, and some proposed new grading rules favor the production of thicker ketchup.But will it ever get any easier to shake your favorite condiment out of the bottle? No time soon, it seems.Food processors have asked the U.S. Agriculture Department to raise the thickness, or viscosity, levels in all three grades of ketchup, with Grade A the thickest. But there's no sign bottles will be redesigned to help you get the ketchup out.Actually, ketchup already is thicker than it used to be and the proposed new grades would simply reflect this, said USDA official Mel Horst.

Holly Renew from Baltimore was looking for a recipe for a mushroom loaf that was served at the now-closed restaurant in Canton called the Wild Mushroom. She said it was a featured item on the menu and similar to a meatloaf in consistency but contained no meat. I was not able to track down the exact recipe she sought, but I did some research and found a recipe for a very tasty vegetable "meatloaf" that was published in the March 2012 issue of Cooking Light magazine. This loaf is full of mushrooms and other vegetables.

If you have a free afternoon and a pile of ripe tomatoes, consider making your own ketchup. I did that recently and it changed my worldview. I became firmly entrenched in the pro-condiment camp. The homemade ketchup was so good and the yield was so substantial that for the next few weeks, ketchup became a constant companion. It transformed run-of-the-mill Monday night meatloaf into a fight-for--the-last bite entree. It cozied up to its natural partner, the hamburger, and gave it new life.

The dining review for Friday's Live section is of Gino's Burgers & Chicken, the rebooted franchise that opened it first Maryland restaurant last August in Towson. Here is the review of Gino's Burgers & Chicken by John Houser III, who concludes that "Gino's still has plenty of hometown burger-joint charm. " Meanwhile, we're still waiting for some confirmation about a Gino's coming to Perry Hall .

When I reached for one of this season's final tomatoes, I got a surprise. It had bruised and was emitting white foam. In another time and place, that tomato, as injured as it was, would have gone into the stewing caldron. Bruised, soft, mushy, reject tomatoes found a welcome at our Guilford Avenue home. September was our ketchup-making month. This was a house where my grandmother and her sister made so much from scratch, from their own clothes to their laundry and kitchen soap.

The dining review for Friday's Live section is of Gino's Burgers & Chicken, the rebooted franchise that opened it first Maryland restaurant last August in Towson. Here is the review of Gino's Burgers & Chicken by John Houser III, who concludes that "Gino's still has plenty of hometown burger-joint charm. " Meanwhile, we're still waiting for some confirmation about a Gino's coming to Perry Hall .

WHETHER WE like it or not, we are categorized by the type of car we drive, the neighborhood we live in, the music we listen to. Now, if certain people in Pittsburgh are right, a new indicator of cutting-edge status in America will be the kind of ketchup we squeeze. If we prefer our ketchup red, tomatoey and, let's be frank here, a bit bland, then we are, in the view of the condiment cognoscenti, very old school. Moreover, we might be repressing our "unmet flavor needs." That is what the ketchup research gurus at the H.J. Heinz Co. up in Pittsburgh say. These are people who have actually conducted focus groups all around the country probing our feelings about condiments.

My grandmother knew what to do on a hot and humid August morning. On one of those days when the air felt like wet foam rubber, she ordered everybody out of the kitchen and made tomato ketchup.On one of the days when the bed sheets stuck and the garden slugs labored away, Grandmother Lily Rose put the corner of Guilford Avenue and 29th Street under a cloud of vinegar and spicy tomato mist.Late August was always ketchup weather on her culinary calendar. It fell somewhere between peach cake, soft crabs and the return of the oyster.

After she retired a year ago, Ruxton resident Dottie Dowling began to see red -- as in lots of red ketchup. With the help of a 1910 cookbook, the former Baltimore County teacher began turning out gallons of the stuff in her kitchen. She eventually came up with a recipe that won first prize at last summer's Maryland State Fair and now is being marketed under the label Big Daddy Basset & Son Co. Ketchup and Beyond. It's at several area stores, including Graul's and Watson's Garden Center in Lutherville.

EVERY NOW and then a bit of information just leaps out at you as commentary on "the way we live." So I've been thinking about cereal this week and cringing.It seems the snap-crackle-pop of vitamin-fortified cereals may be all that stands between some of our children and malnutrition. Breakfast cereal is the No. 1 source for children of vitamin A, vitamin C, iron and folate, according to a study published this month in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics."It appears that breakfast cereals are acting as a dietary supplement as well as a food," reported Amy Subar.

When I reached for one of this season's final tomatoes, I got a surprise. It had bruised and was emitting white foam. In another time and place, that tomato, as injured as it was, would have gone into the stewing caldron. Bruised, soft, mushy, reject tomatoes found a welcome at our Guilford Avenue home. September was our ketchup-making month. This was a house where my grandmother and her sister made so much from scratch, from their own clothes to their laundry and kitchen soap.

Here's a hamburger recipe from Top Chef Ariane Duarte, using Finlandia cheese, "Guests love to feel pampered and one way you can do that is to replicate the restaurant experience at home. I like to offer my guests a host of burger toppings, but make them special by introducing high-quality ingredients to the menu.” 1 ¼ pounds lean ground beef 1 ¼ cup chopped onion 3 tablespoons ketchup 1 tablespoon prepared horseradish 2 teaspoons prepared mustard Salt & pepper to taste Suggested Finlandia Cheese : Swiss, Muenster or Gouda 4 sesame seed buns or hard rolls Combine lean ground beef with onion, ketchup, horseradish, mustard, salt and pepper.  Gently mix with hands until all ingredients are just blended.  Shape into 4 patties about ½ inch thick.

When I heard that Barack Obama's favorite food is pizza from Italian Fiesta Pizzeria in Hyde Park, Chicago, I got to wondering about what our past 10 presidents liked to eat best. Most of the following foods are debatable, but that doesn't make the information any less interesting. I tried to get at least two sources for each one: 1 George W. Bush: Mexican food 2 William J. Clinton: Chicken enchiladas (allergic to chocolate!) 3 George H. W. Bush: Pork rinds 4 Ronald Reagan: Macaroni and cheese 5 Jimmy Carter: Sirloin steak 6 Gerald Ford: Pot roast and red cabbage 7 Richard Nixon: Cottage cheese and ketchup 8 Lyndon Johnson: He liked Fresca so much he had a fountain dispensing the soda pop installed in the Oval Office.

Why do onions need to be refrigerated after cutting? Wouldn't it be just as well to put the onion in a container or baggy and put it back in the pantry? And does an opened container of ketchup need to be refrigerated? You refrigerate a cut onion for several reasons. One is that cutting into anything introduces bacteria, which will grow more quickly and cause spoilage faster at room temperature. When you cut the onion, you also rupture the cells, which leak moisture and cause spoilage.

If you have a free afternoon and a pile of ripe tomatoes, consider making your own ketchup. I did that recently and it changed my worldview. I became firmly entrenched in the pro-condiment camp. The homemade ketchup was so good and the yield was so substantial that for the next few weeks, ketchup became a constant companion. It transformed run-of-the-mill Monday night meatloaf into a fight-for--the-last bite entree. It cozied up to its natural partner, the hamburger, and gave it new life.

This year at Artscape, a man walked the festival covered from head to squishy foot in ketchup. He might have called that art. Or maybe fashion. Neither was true, in his case, but the city's three-day comprehensive showcase of art in all its forms usually is an excellent place to see examples of art-as-fashion, and / or fashion-as-art. WONDERING IF YOU WERE GLIMPSED? Check out baltimoresun.com / glimpsed for additional photos of fashion-forward locals and a critique by fashion writer Tanika White of the styles she saw around town.

Dirty Harry, the movie cop, wasn't wrong very often. A bit nasty and heavy-handed with criminals. But in the end, he was usually right.But in one of my favorite Dirty Harry scenes, he couldn't have been more wrong.It was early in "Sudden Impact." He had just looked at a murder victim. He walked away and appeared to be brooding.A fellow cop, munching a hot dog, asked him if crime was starting to get to him.Dirty Harry said: "No, this stuff isn't getting to me. The shootings, the knifings, the beatings, old ladies being bashed in the head for their Social Security checks, teachers being thrown out of a fourth-floor window because they don't give A's. That doesn't bother me a bit."

THE TOUCH OF humidity in the air on August mornings makes me think of ketchup, not the thick variety you find in stores, but the runny, homemade condiment my grandmother bottled this time of year.In the Guilford Avenue house where I was raised, the calendar dictated that certain jobs be done, and neither August steaminess nor having just unpacked from a long stay at the beach prevented these ordeals of the season.At the end of the summer, as the local vegetable crops grew plentiful and the prices fell, my grandmother Lily Rose and her sister Cora started preparing for the winter.

How long will condiments last in the refrigerator? I searched the Web to determine what are the shelf lives of ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. All three products have high acid contents, and it is their acidity that keeps bacterial growth at bay. Heinz recommends that you use its ketchup within 15 months of its manufacture, regardless of where you store it. To determine when it was made, decode the product code on the package. For example, in FR6B08, "FR" refers to the production location, "6" represents the year of production (i.e.

MOSCOW -- When most Russians think ketchup, they think of Baltimor. Not Baltimore the American city, but the maker of the condiment generously smothered here on foods that most Americans wouldn't care to use it on, including rice, bread and boiled meat dumplings. It turns out Russians think ketchup a lot: Average annual consumption is estimated at more than three pounds, more in Moscow and other big cities. This has laid the groundwork for a kind of ketchup war. The producer of America's best-selling ketchup, Heinz, has launched an effort to squeeze more of its brand onto Russians' dinner plates and challenge its Russian counterpart -- Baltimor -- as king of the condiments.