In a phone conversation with my younger sister today the subject of what to do with the pork loin and Chinese cabbage my hubby picked up, that lead to how I cannot guess, but ketchup. She suggested making stuffed cabbage rolls like our mother used to make. I said "I do not have any tomato sauce, nor would I cut up a beautiful piece of meat into small chunks", she said "do you have ketchup", I responded quite harshly "Yuck! No, we do not have any reason for that useless condiment in our house". Since I became quite the gourmet, my son moved away, and I no longer buy fish in the breaded stick form in my freezer. If I eat a hamburger it's with blue cheese, red onion, tomato and lettuce on a whole wheat bun (my own commercial), and no ketchup!
As usual we go straight into talking about how we did this and you did that as a child conversation. I knew exactly what she was about to bring up...my childhood obsession with putting ketchup on my mashed potatoes. She told me how seeing someone in a restaurant recently put ketchup on their sausage and biscuits made her think of me. I quickly let her know I would never ruin a wonderful comfort food like that with ketchup, and she told me to slow down, it was only the idea of ketchup on something that brought up the memory.
Do not get me wrong I love my little sister and she knows it, but she cannot cook! She cooks like my mom did...memory...of her volunteering to cook the lovely thick cut pork chops I had bought to put on the grill...visualize this...she takes out a hammer and pounds them to a pulp...covers them with lawry's seasoning salt (oh, this is at her house while I was visiting a few years ago), and pepper...throws them under her gas broiler and turns them into leather. I could hardly chew it, and thank god I had my own bottle of wine to save me from harming her...stove. I did tell her how ever that I appreciated her efforts to let me relax, but if I wanted to eat my old pair of shoes, I would have done so. She can put ketchup on that!
This next photo is rated adults only and was my original one for this blog, but my hubby cautioned me, so if any children are looking over your shoulder shew them away...now click to enlarge photo cartoon...
