Dear Lola – Excuse me fancy pants…

Dear Lola,

I recently stumbled across an oddity while doing my weekly grocery shop. I was purchasing ketchup and as I was grabbing my usual bottle, I saw that the ketchup next to it was labeled fancy. My ketchup doesn’t say it is fancy. The colors looked the same. The ingredients looked the same. What makes some ketchup fancy while others are just plain?

Sincerely,
Keen for Ketchup

Dear Keen for Ketchup,

You and my Mommybeast would get along well. She also has a penchant for ketchup that sometimes results in her planning an entire dinner around items she can dip into the delicious sauce. I’ve looked in our refrigerator and discovered a shocking fact – we use ketchup. Not fancy ketchup! I must investigate this for a moment.

I’ve searched, and once again The Google has proved itself useless. Humans just don’t have the answers to these deep life questions. Thank goodness my bulldog brain came loaded with them!

Fancy ketchup is made with fancy tomatoes.

Not content to be grown in a dirt field, fancy tomatoes are cultivated in crystal vases. When it is time for their watering, an outdoor hose is turned away. Fancy tomatoes prefer only the purest of waters to touch their delicate skins. Water from Mount Haleakalā in Hawai’i is the most desired, but other mountain top water can be substituted during emergencies. Fancy tomatoes demand the very top accommodations and are never left exposed to the elements like wind – and that greenhouse glass they live behind is actually made of diamonds. To finish off the five-star life of a fancy tomato, they are pruned with shears made of 24 karat gold.

All that aside, I cannot find a single taste difference between ketchup and fancy ketchup. Still, I think I’ll have Mommybeast switch our brands so that I can dream of that wonderful tomato life.