Well, that sucked [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

How brown do you let tomato catsup turn before you start to worry about safety rather than just aesthetics? (I'm thinking about those leftover fast-food catsup packets that I occasionally pull out of my fridge, never being sure what colour I'll find inside until I open one.)

I specify tomato catsup because the only other kind of catsup I have any experience with is mushroom, and the mushroom catsup was already brown when I first saw it and I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be that colour. Which suggests a follow-up question: how many of you have eaten non-tomato catsups?

I had a thoroughly wretched day. Woke up coughing badly and spent the rest of the morning that way, then crashed again, woke up just before the HCB gig in the evening, still at home, un-showered, and in so much pain it hurt even to push the buttons on my phone. So, a missed performance, womdigious pain ... but one encouraging sign: no coughing from about 20:00 to 23:30! A little tickle now, but down in the "maybe I can squash this with albuterol and menthol" range. Now if I can convince my body to get back to sleep again in time to wake up early enough to throw instruments in the car and head up to Darkover for the Playford dance in the morning, maybe the next twenty hours won't such as much as the last forty.

Still not really sure about playing woodwinds -- will have to see just how well I'm breathing tomorrow -- but if other melody instruments make it, I can stick to guitar and bass.

If I'm not coughing in the morning then I'm probably also not contagious, right?

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Maybe, maybe not. But if you're feverish, you definitely are.

There's other melody instruments at Darkover as of Friday night. But It really sounds like your best course is to stay home & rest.

If you'd like me to drop any supplies off on Sunday on our way home,, give me a call: 202/468-6513.

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Haven't caught myself showing a fever with a thermometer yet, but sometimes wake up much more sweaty than ambient temperature would be reasonable for, and yesterday woke with my digits icy cold.

Today cough is back but mild, and pain is back in spades.

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I've never even heard of non-tomato catsup (which I spell ketchup, as does Firefox.)

Also, I've never seen ketchup change color unless it's left out to dry out.

Wikipedia apparently spells it 'ketchup' too (both spellings are equally familiar to me, but the older 'catchup' is one that I find jarring), and says that nowadays commercially produced catsup is limited to only tomato, mushroom, and banana varieties. Eventually I should try to dig up recipes for other catsups/ketchups in old cookbooks and try to make them. Someday.

In the bottle, tomato ketchup changes colour pretty darned slowly (I've seen it happen in the fridge, because I use it up so very slowly); the change is much more pronounced in those wee packets, and I've learned to look at the colour inside when I open them, before squirting them on my plate, just in case.

I've still never seen non-tomato ketchup anywhere, nor heard of it prior to this post. :)

If it's brown instead of red, it's either oxidized in some way or else has undergone a chemical reaction of some kind -- possibly acids reacting with metals -- don't eat it.

(And I won't be at Darkover after all; I hit my head accidentally last night and am having mild concussion symptoms, but enough that when I started to drive over this morning I only got to Laurel before I couldn't handle traffic and turned around. Am feeling fairly rotten about it.)

Edited Date: 2009-11-28 03:45 pm (UTC)

Ah. I think I can rule out reaction with metal in the instances I happen to have seen, but yeah, I can see why it might happen much faster in contact with metal. I wonder whether the plastic fast-food packets are slightly gas-permeable or something ... or maybe they have a small air bubble in them and there's just a higher percentage of the contents of the packet exposed to the surface of the air bubble than the percentage of catsup in a bottle exposed to the air above the level of the catsup in the neck of the bottle?

Sorry to hear about your injury and not coming to Darkover. My own attendance is now in question as well, because I can barely move and need to be on the road Real Soon Now if I'm going to get there in time for the things I was going for in the first place.

A certain restaurant I recall had homemade tomato ketchup that was at least on the brownish side; the commercial stuff is, I presume not the natural color. That being said, I wouldn't know why it'd turn brown, or whether it's okay--me, I'd err on the side of safety.

A couple of times I've wondered whether I was just seeing normal variation between brands, but when opening another packet with the same logo on it produces a brighter colour, that tells me it's probably age. A variant browner when fresh wouldn't surprise me in a bottle in a store, or in a restaurant, and I do see colour differences between different brands of red catsup, but more-brown-than-red out of a fast-food packet makes me wary.

I think I'll continue rejecting the packets with more than about one shade of darkening, as you suggest.

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