Ketchup.

My first job was flipping hamburgers at a Fuddruckers restaurant. Well, eventually I got around to being the guy who flipped the hamburgers; at first I was a cashier. But after a time, I became the guy who cooked all the meat for everyone who came in to have dinner on the nights I worked. I cooked hundreds of hamburgers to different levels of doneness with all sorts of garnishes. I did it fast and I did it well and I went home covered in a thin film of melted cow fat (the smell of which could never, ever come out of my work uniform) and I enjoyed it.

It was at my first job that I began to learn to speak Spanish. I would converse with the cooks, bussers and dishwashers at whatever level at which I could, each of us slowly learning bits of the other's language. Eventually, restaurant work would teach me enough Spanish that I could function in Spanish-speaking countries with minimal difficulty.

In the early stages of my informal Spanish eductation, I learned primarily from Mexicans. In doing so, I developed a strongly pronounced Mexican accent with my Spanish. It was heavy and entertaining enough that one of my coworkers began to address me only as "Mexicano," which quickly caught on. (Hispanics in restaurant work like to develop nicknames for most everyone who works with them; ten and a half years of foodservice work in many locations gives me license for this sweeping generality.)

The woman who gave me this nickname was named Gloria. She was very kind and she stayed at Fuddruckers for years after I left. She was normally very reserved and proper at work, unless Juanes was playing on the stereo in the prep area. That man's music had a remarkable effect on gloria...

The funny thing about working with Gloria (at a hamburger restaurant) was that she could not, for the life of her, pronounce the word "ketchup." A lot of Hispanics in the kitchen would just say something like "keh-chah," which is probably the most common pronunciation of "ketchup" in the world of Hispanic immigrants with limited English working in foodservice.

But Gloria didn't say keh-chah, or ketchup. She said "kep-chuh."

Kepchuh.

I like ketchup. Ketchup tastes pretty good. I like really good homemade ketchup, but even normal fakey ketchup is just fine. It makes food that's kind of lame taste a little saltier, a little sweeter, a little better. Really lame fries? Grab a little ketchup. Crappy dry meatloaf? Squirt o' ketchup, good to go. Severely overcooked hamburger? I'd like some ketchup for that.

Remember when they came out with ketchup in all those bright, disturbing, you're-about-to-poison-my-child colors? That was funny. Even funnier still was when Heinz, in a moment of hilarious self-deprecation, released their ketchup with all those cheeky phrases on the labels, one of which read "still available in red." Awesome. Probably my favorite food packaging ever.

Ketchup is good for taking familiar things of low quality and making them more palatable - ketchup has its place.

But there are things for which I would never, ever use ketchup.

Really good food - aside from being really good - is often also an expression of the taste or the understanding or the philosophy of the person who prepared it.

I currently work at a really, really nice restaurant. Our kitchen puts out some of the best food you can get in the Twin Cities. If you order dinner at the restaurant, the food you'll eventually have put in front of you is a reflection of a very specific style. You'll get top-quality ingredients from farmers and ranchers in the region (most of which come from within 200 miles of the restaurant) put together in a way that is reflective of an understanding of Midwestern cuisine with a deep appreciation for classic French and Italian influences. It's really, really good food.

Sometime's I'll put a guest's order in front of him or her and the guest will ask for some salt and pepper. I usually say "of course," retrieve salt and pepper, and give it to the guest. Then I'll walk away thinking that this person is silly. I walk away thinking that the guest is silly because the guests who ask for salt and pepper haven't tasted the food. They have no idea whether the food is adequately seasoned. They have no idea whether what they ordered measures up to the expectations they developed while reading the menu's description of the dish.

After I (almost) get over the silliness of asking for things with which to change the taste of one's food before one even knows what it tastes like, I think about how a guest might be used to a certain way of eating food, might not have very refined taste, or a number of other things that might be a reason to give the guest a break.

But what about ketchup? Keh-chah? Kep-chuh?

What if a guest asked me for ketchup upon receiving his or her meal?

At this point, I don't know that I'd immediately comply with the request. I think I might try to reason with the guest, cautioning them that the addition of ketchup would likely introduce flavors into the dish that weren't intended to be there (an argument that can also be made in many cases with regard to black pepper, by the way). Sir, are you sure? The duck breast on your plate (which has had the fat from its skin gently rendered, leaving the skin crisp as the meat has been turned over to heat it just to a perfect medium rare, at which point it is paired with an extreme reduction of duck stock blended with local grapes and placed on a plate with other seasonal accompaniments) may not benefit from the addition of ketchup. In related news, you may want to taste the food before you try to alter it in any way, you completely crazy person.

I feel like I'm professional enough to be a little gentler than that were this to actually happen at the restaurant, but that is not the point.

The point, which I may have weakened by tying it to food (about which many people have wildly different opinions) is this:

Some things don't need to be altered. Sometimes we might benefit from trying to understand what is in front of us instead of trying to change it.

I get an awful lot of ketchup at church. Like, a lot.

The ketchup doesn't come in a bottle, and isn't served alongside communion wafers and grape juice. I do usually ask an usher for salt and pepper before I've tasted the elements, though.

I often get a pretty staggering dose of ketchup during musical worship at church. The entire congregation joins together in song, pouring their hearts out while they drown in vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, and just a touch of onion powder. It adds such a savory depth to the whole thing. Plus you get all that lycopene. Good antioxidant properties, you know.

I was inspired to write about ketchup a few weeks ago while I was at church.

We were singing a couple of really old hymns, namely Amazing Grace and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

The thing is, we weren't really singing these old hymns. We were singing the infuriating "updated" versions of these hymns. The ones where somebody decided "these hymns are so old and awesome that I'm going to stick a crappy bridge into it so that I may call it my own and release it on a record."

A lot of people are familiar with Amazing Grace. Some may not be familiar with the added bridge, which tragically cannot be burned with the fire of my anger:

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood, His mercy reigns

Unending love, amazing grace

The third line of the bridge is particularly infuriating. For one thing, floods don't reign over anything. Yes, one can stretch the meaning of the word "reign" to include something akin to what a flood does. But nobody in a church means that when they say "reign." Additionally, even if the word "reign" is applied to what a flood does, I don't think that draws a favorable comparison to God's mercy. This, however, is not the point. The point was made in short earlier and will continue to be made upon inspection of the crappy new bridge for Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

Come Thou Fount, come Thou King

Come Thou precious Prince of Peace

Hear your bride, to You we sing

Come Thou Fount of our blessing

My big problem with this one isn't a confusion of definitions; rather, it is just straight-up hackery. When choosing to "update" a centuries-old hymn which has been used in the church for ...centuries... somebody chose to rhyme the word "sing" with with the word ..."blessing." I hope it sounds stupid when you read it, 'cause you better believe I feel like a dingus when I'm standing in a room full of people singing it. It's just really shitty songwriting, which is less of a problem on its own than it is when used to augment a centuries-old hymn which needs no augmentation.

One of the parts of church I really enjoy is singing old hymns. I feel really, really good about singing the same song with which people have connected for decades, sometimes centuries. It gives me a pretty great feeling to join in that particular part of the tradition of Christian worship. It makes me think about all the good things that have persisted. It fills me with hope and, quite often, moves me to tears. It makes me think that I can understand some small part of the way in which people who have come before me have received God's message of love and hope and grace for all people.

And then we pour ketchup all over it.

Sometimes we might benefit from trying to understand what is in front of us instead of trying to change it.

Some things don't need to be altered.