ketchup

So there's Papa Tomato, Momma Tomato and Baby Tomato walking along the street. Baby Tomato starts lagging behind, and Papa Tomato starts getting really angry. So, he turns around and squishes Baby Tomato and says, 'Ketchup.'

why this obsession with ketchup? i mean i've never considered myself a ketchup person, never been crazy about the condiment, and i only ever use it on burgers and fries.. and besides, how un-foodie can you get? and yet inextricably i find myself thinking about ketchup. is it because it resembles fake blood? does it represent my soul in a bottle?

ketchup dates back from a condiment used in 17th century china called 'ke-tsiap' - it was made from fermented fish sauce and resembled soy or oyster sauce. it wasn't until it was brought to new england in the early 1800s that the recipe included tomatoes.. 97% of households in america have ketchup in their fridges. in 1981 the reagan administration even briefly counted ketchup as a vegetable.

..mmm - think i'll get some fries for lunch... (a nice healthy vegetarian meal..

remora duck

i am watching a remora fish - normally which would be attached to a shark in its symbiosis, cleaning and feeding on its scraps.. instead it is sucking up little pebbles from the floor of the water and spitting them out, trying to get as much algae from it as it can to eat, but it is not enough.. instead it turns into a brightly colored duck and happily dives and splashes about, with its mouth full of moss and algae..

my dreams are getting harder to discern..

umami

at dinner with foodies last night the term 'umami' was used to describe food and wine.. this was the first time i had heard the term spoken outside of japanese, and was surprised to find the word had made it into the english lexicon.

literally meaning 'deliciousness', i always thought of it as the taste sensation of 'savouriness' - that which makes your mouth water and your tastebuds sing! apparently, our tastebuds have receptors for 5 different tastes: bitter, salty, sour, sweet - and now a fifth taste - umami. the sensations of pungent (warm/spicy - like vodka, chile peppers), cold (menthol), and fat - (yes, we actually have fat receptors on our tongue!) - are detected by somatosensory receptors, not considered to be tastes per se.

umami is the savoury taste sensation one gets from tasting free amino acids - particulary glutamates and ribonucleotides including inosinate and guanylate - naturally present in foods such as parmesan cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, kelp, soysauce, meat and fish.. salt acts synergistically to boost the umami taste, and thus the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate was popularized..

our first taste of umami is in breastmilk, which is rich in glutamates - perhaps this is why 'comfort foods' seem to consist of a mixture of carbs and foods rich in umami - mac & cheese, rice & beans, mashed potatoes... most of our condiments too - boullions/broths, soysauce, fish sauce - and what else but...ketchup!

great expectations

in mathematic terms, expectation is the sum of the values of a random variable divided by the number of variables, like the arithmetic mean. does this mean we should just expect what is average?

an expectation is a belief about (or mental picture of) the future - an anticipation, a hope, a trust of something that is about to happen.

parents have expectations of their children, which at times weigh heavily - the need to not disappoint them, to dash their hopes and dreams of you. in the end, they just want for you to be happy. although initially they may not see your path as a viable route to that happiness. how is it that they always seem to have a plan, a direction, a drive that i lack?

in the career path, being unsettled may be the most difficult - not knowing, uncertainty of direction seems almost worse than being stuck in a job that you despise. my best friend would say that there are always options. weighing the risks and benefits of any situation and choosing is where the decision lies, and what you have to live with.

personal expectations are the trickiest. matters of the heart are never easy. my motto has been to "hope for the best, expect the worst - so that anything in betweeen doesn't come as a disappointment". we realise with great difficulty sometimes that no one person, no one relationship is infallable.. it is hard to not come to expect certain things when we feel we have put our hearts out on the line. we anticipate our loved ones to respond in the way we want or think that we would in that same situation. i guess we just have to remember all of us come to this point in time with miscellaneous baggage and not everyone handles the weight with the same attachments or decisiveness of others.

are we walking a path with the future a big black box ahead of us? choice is what is supposed to control the future, but there are many random variables outside of our choices.. and then there is possibly fate, karma, kismet.. and there is hope.. ("you have to create an atmosphere for hope" says my cerebrally mended friend..)

to the new year. let us trust that it is better than average, and that it can quite possibly be great.