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Yes, there is such a thing as banana ketchup, and it is yellow. |
Tight seams prompted the
need to seek some viable alternatives to the ever-tempting and overly available
devilishly delicious and terribly fattening French salami. Inspired by the squeaky clean and
relatively affordable Le Gourmet Marche supermarket in Dutch St. Maarten, it
seemed trustworthy enough to (overcome my lurking fear of E. coli from untrustworthy hamburger
sources) buy lean Angus ground sirloin to make home-made
meatloaf.
Far
from the fatty diner-style meatloaf, mine is uses ground sirloin and chock full of savory stuff… green
olives with pimentos, capers, sautéed onion and garlic, herbs du Provence,
tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, Parmesan cheese, sometimes mushrooms…. It’s
lean enough I have to float a little olive oil so it doesn’t dry out in the
oven. Then it takes a turkey
baster after it’s cooked to remove the extra veggie liquid the seeps out.
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Banana Santa street art in Grande Case, St. Martin. Bananas are cheap and plentiful here in the Caribbean. |
We
even had home-made herb bread with kalamata (recipe from Kay Pastorius’ “Cruising
Cuisine” cookbook – a gift from fellow cruiser friend Lili Pelko of
Heron) and green olives (ran out of kalamata) for meatloaf sammy
makings.
What
was missing from this classic all-American lunch? Ketchup. Garrison Keillor (click
here for a Keillor ketchup NPR audio clip) would be aghast!
In
my effort to embrace local Caribbean cuisine, I did buy some… banana
ketchup. It sat, unopened for the
last two months. I was timid,
Wayne was kind of grossed out at the concept. And it’s yellow, though due far more to yellow dye #5.
So,
for the sake of using what we had on board, we tried it. It tasted a lot like… uhhh… drum roll
please… ketchup. Maybe a bit more
spicy, cinnamon and / or maybe nutmeg – the ingredient list doesn’t specify
what the “spices” are.
Garrison,
whatdya think? Spoofable in a
future NPR episode? It would fly
even less with Prairie Home Companion Midwestern Lutherans than Palm Springs,
much less the Caribbean.
WE`ve tried banana ketchup in the Philippines,on banana chips!! very interesting 1
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