Cup of Coffee

December 7, 2023: The 43rd Variety

73 Comments

I brought this up a few days ago, the reason being is that my family loves ketchup and I largely forgo it. What is your level of ketchup enthusiasm?

Ketchup

  • Useful in specific situations (40%, 8 Votes)
  • I'm a fan (35%, 7 Votes)
  • Garbage condiment (20%, 4 Votes)
  • Could take it or leave it (5%, 1 Votes)
  • I put ketchup on my ketchup (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 20

Loading ... Loading ...

73 thoughts on “December 7, 2023: The 43rd Variety”

  1. I think George Gallup himself would scratch his head at the poll categories. I'm a fan of ketchup, and find it useful in specific situations. And are you talking about sriracha ketchup, because that kicks my answer up a notch.

    1. A burger with American cheese, pickles, ketchup and mustard is pretty darn good. No ragrets.

        1. whoa now, I will not tolerate pickle slander.

          Actually, though, my go-to for burgers is sauteed mushrooms, provolone or swiss, mayo, and bbq.

          1. My typical cheeseburger order is fried onions, mayo, & pickles. At home I’ll do a that burg with Greek seasoning added to the outside of the patty, or green/Hatch chiles & mayo if I want to switch things up.

            Or I’ll dispense with the bun and make loco moco — rice, burger, brown gravy, fried egg, ketchup, sriracha, chile crisp, and fried shallots.

            1. Fried onions and pickles? That combo make no sense to me. Fried onion is for warm sweet burgers, pickles for tangy fresh burgers. That's like putting mustard on bread pudding. Raw onion and pickle? Yes. Fried and pickle? No.

              1. I encourage you to try it! It’s something I picked up from making Oklahoma onion burgers. I don’t always order that combo in the smash style of the OOB, but I find a good tavern burger around these parts is suitable for the same toppings. Here’s Kenji’s version:

                1. Extra grilled onions always go on my Double-Double, Animal Style

                  At home, grilled burgers typically get the works (onion, grilled or not, pickles, mustard, ketchup, tomato slices, maybe lettuce and mayo).

                  1. At home we mix it up. The classic probably gets the most play (raw onion, pickles, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mayo, mix and match as you see fit), but we do a lot of carmelized onions/mushrooms, juicy lucys, bbq sauce, gold bbq sauce, eggs and bacon, etc.

        2. Yellow mustard is indeed a garbage condiment. Useful in one or two situations, and anyone who claims otherwise has been shamed by big mustard into thinking it's something it's not (for example, good or edible).

          We don't even have a bottle of it in our house except on the rare occasion where we know that someone who's been misted by Big Mustard will be needing it, and then we buy the smallest bottle possible.

          Now brown mustard is another matter, entirely.

          1. My deviled eggs and potato salad take exception to your yellow mustard commentary. And so do my bologna sandwiches.

              1. My wife had a boss who put yellow mustard on his baked potatoes. Now that's going too far, but otherwise I am a mustard aficionado - yellow, brown, Chinese, Dijon, and honey are all in the rotation.

                1. I like other mustards in moderation and on certain things. Yellow is just the worst, fit for deviled eggs and nearly nothing else.

            2. Cooking such as this is where yellow mustard most commonly gets used in my home. I'm right with you on using all of the mustards. I've usually got far too many varieties in my fridge at any one time.

    2. The number of people who have been shamed into thinking ketchup is terrible on a hot dog, while yellow mustard is somehow not even worse? Truly sad.

      1. You accidentally set your hot dog next to a picture of a bottle of mustard, congratulations, you may as well throw the hot dog away and just squirt the mustard directly into your mouth, because that's all you're going to taste.

    3. I need an answer that says “I make my own.”

      One unsung use for ketchup is as an ingredient for the sauce that becomes a glaze on a really nice meatloaf. That said, my meatloaf glaze would definitely raise a few of my ancestors’ eyebrows…

        1. I used ketchup & tomato paste as a sneaky substitute for the tomato I didn’t have when I made bò kho last night. Frankly, not having the little bits of tomato in the finished dish was nice, since they never cook down enough to totally vanish into the stew.

          1. My Mom used ketchup in her baked beans. And molasses, onion, and bacon fat. And I totally agree with ketchup for meat loaf.

            1. Ketchup and baked beans brings up bad memories of being in England and watching the Scottish sales guy I was on the trip with putting ketchup on his breakfast baked beans.

    4. I really don't have a use for tomatoes at all other than ketchup, in salsa, or a good tomato bisque, otherwise it's just a watery filler getting in the way of the good stuff.

        1. This is tomato paste erasure. The double concentrated stuff is so versatile!

          Also, I’m curious what Rhu_Ru eats between the crust and Provel of his pizzas…

      2. Nah, the acidity and sweetness from tomatoes is useful in a lot of applications, from marinara sauce to tikka masala to Greek salad. I question the quality of your tomatoes if you consider them watery filler.

        1. I'll grant you the first two, but the Greek salad are chunks of tomatoes, and no thank you. I'm fine with sweetness and acidity, but find a better packaging for it.

      1. I was once like you...

        But seriously, I've come around on tomatoes these past few years. I'm not popping cherry tomatoes as a snack or anything, but I've allowed them in places I never would have before, like in the holy sanctuary of sammiches.

          1. Between me adn the girls, we'll go through a pint of cherry tomatoes in a day if we're not careful. My wife is always aghast.

            I will pick a tomato off the vine and eat it like an apple

  2. Estrellas did not play yesterday.

    Caribes scored five in the fourth, but that was all they got and they lost to Aragua 8-5. Willians Astudillo was 1-for-5. Ricardo Genoves was 2-for-3 with a home run, his fourth. Asdrubal Cabrera and Herlis Rodriguez were each 2-for-4. Balbino Fuenmayor was 2-for-5 with a double. Jesus Paricaguan started, giving up three runs on eight hits in 4.2 innings and striking out one. The loss went to Luis Amaya (0-3), who allowed a run on one hit in two-thirds of an inning.

    2. Still a mess of an outfield. Where does Stanton, under contract another four years and $118 million (Marlins will pay $20 million of that), play? The Yankees might get to pay him to play elsewhere. Plus the Yankees traded for a worse version of Kepler that's due the same amount of money.

      1. I mean, Stanton would be primary with an OF of Verdugo, Judge, and Soto. The sunk cost of that deal is almost irrelevant when they are willing to go over $300M in annual payroll. He hasn’t played more than 40 games in the OF since 2018 anyway.

        He’s projected for around a .333 wOBA. Only 9 teams had a team wOBA better than .333 in 2023.

          1. Soto played 154 games in the outfield last year and was a 5.5 fWAR (5.5 rWAR) player. Yeah, defense matters, but his bat far outweighs that and the Yankees are likely aiming for a pitching staff that will rely on high strikeout rates anyway.

            Specifically with Soto, I think the bigger issue is that they traded some assets for one year of his services when they probably could have used those assets in other ways and just signed him as a free agent at the end of the year on top of that. I doubt he's going to be so charmed by Aaron Boone or whoever that it really impacts his next contract negotiation and Boras is notorious for not doing extensions.

    3. Yeah, I found the first season to be a slog. After the 3rd (ish) episode of the second season I was hooked. Not the greatest show for me, but I found it compelling enough to finish.

      2. I’m interested in Pika. I see right now accounts are effectively a Pika subdomain, and I was wondering if there are an option for (or plans for) self-hosted accounts or support for URLs using personal domains.

        1. Yes, there are plans for custom domains, but not self-hosted installations. This will happen at some point because I need it in order to use Pika to run my personal site. (There are also plans for a Pages feature. It's sort of implemented already, but hidden.)

          I'm hoping Pages hits before Christmas. Custom domains will most likely take longer, which means hopefully sometime Q1 next year. It's a bit dependent on what else we decide to work on – we might stand up yet another product before one of our team takes a break with parental leave.

          I should note that long term both Pages and custom domains will probably be part of a paid plan feature.

            1. Ruby on Rails, Postgres & largely vanilla JS, but we’re using the tiptap editor for now. We might write our own editor at some point, though. Hosted at Render.com.

        1. Done. I usually pick whatever is the site title as the link text and add in the citizen's name as the description that will pop up when hovering over the link.

  5. There are now two ketchup CoC post pictures in the library that will likely never be used again. Or not? Who's to say what the world has in store for us.

    2. Sir. Are you not aware of the utterly random images nibbish has been known to employ in his game logs?

  6. TV question:

    Has anyone watched The Leftovers? I've seen it on a lot of top lists with other shows I've liked. I'm having trouble getting into it. Finished the first season. First half was a chore to watch. Second half was better but hasn't hooked me.

    1. I know a few people for whom it is the pinnacle of TV.

      I'm where you are, it didn't click and I tapped out either late season 1 or early season 2, I can't even remember which.

    2. I loved it but it's definitely in my wheelhouse. No one denies Season 1 is a slog. Even the creators admitted as much and changed things up in seasons 2 and 3. I think if you stick through it you will be richly rewarded but admittedly YMMV.

      The one thing, and it's not a spoiler, the show is called The Leftovers, meaning it's focused on who remains on Earth. If you want answers to what happened neatly tied up in a bow, probably will be disappointed in the end.

      1. Thanks for this.

        I was hoping someone would tell me it starts moving a little faster. I know the setup to a complicated story can take some time.

      2. I actually found the first season really compelling and didn’t like 2 and 3 as much. Not that I blame anyone for their preferences.

Comments are closed.