A bottle of commercial tomato sauce was examined in detail at the dinner table tonight. I will not go into why tomato sauce was being consumed with dinner - just accept that there was a bottle at the table.
Several things stood out.
One - this particular brand of tomato sauce was 68% tomato puree or extract. That's about 60% more than I expected. I always thought that tomato sauce was munched up guava mixed with red paint and salt. To find that it actually had tomatoes in it - amazing. The things you learn.
Two - it is supposed to be refrigerated after opening. Well bugger me! I have opened a lot of fridges in my time (to poke around generally) and I have never, ever seen a bottle of tomato sauce in the fridge. I have seen many a bottle in the pantry, exposed to the elements and the viscitudes of the weather, but never seen it kept at a stable temp of 4 degrees. Hell, I have seen the squidgy bits that leak out of the lid being left out in the open for months and then seen someone scoop them off and eat them with no ill effects. Face it, tomato sauce is like penicillin. It is highly unlikely that even the nastiest super flesh eating bug would be able to last more than a few minutes after contact with even the minutest amount of tomato sauce.
Next time you get admitted to hospital after some suffering a horrible wound, just take a bottle with you and insist that the A&E staff stick the squirty tip into the wound and fill the wound to the top with goopy red stuff. You're sure to recover in no time at all.
Three - tomato sauce contains some sort of natural anti-oxidant that is found in tomatoes. Once again, bugger me. Not that I am surprised that tomatoes contain something vaguely healthy - I am just amazed that the manufacturer would be taken to claiming some kind of dubious health benefit from tomato sauce. Face it, as far as health benefits go, eating tomato sauce is one step up from smoking. Then again, maybe not. OK, at least it is better than smoking crack, but not a whole lot better. It's not necessarilly the sauce that is bad - it is just the food that compliments it so well. Chiko rolls. Pies. The really awful hot dogs made out of mechanically recovered lips and arseholes and woodchips that you get at the cricket. Chips. Sausage rolls.
About the only thing it doesn't go well with is tempura covered lard sticks.
Next thing you know, we'll see the following on the side of cigarette packs - "Smoke keeps away mosquitoes that carry malaria".
No comments:
Post a Comment