Be sure to use a condiment every time!

You've seen those pictures in which someone photoshops and colorswitches, so that lawns appear purple and scrambled eggs are magenta, and you wonder how they even have time to fool around like that.  I mean, if The Creator had intended for mint to be orange, the people who make Life Savers would have been the first to know.

Now, when it comes to splashing extra flavor on hot dogs, I need a lot...pickle relish, sauerkraut, mustard, and catsup.  (I'm the last holdout calling it 'catsup.') The overwhelming market leader in the mustard world is French's.  The good people over at 1 Mustard Street have 30% of America's mustard business, while Heinz has the catsup industry in a virtual stranglehold, with a tight grip on 60% of the red-goo sales.

So, just like two fat dogs fighting over one lean bone, they have each decided to go after the other's business.  Heinz is not new to making mustard; they've sold it by the tank car load to the food service industry for years, but now, beside the handy ten-gallon tub for ballparks, they have come out with a plastic bottle for sale at the Buy'N'Bag on the same shelf as French's.

French's has retaliated by coming out with their own brand of catsup, the sales pitch being that they don't use high fructose corn syrup, which, as we all know, is potentially fatal even in small doses.

French's isn't even owned by anyone named French or anyone French at all. It's owned by the England-based Reckitt Benckiser Group, whose president, Elliott Penner, denies that a food fight between his outfit and the Heinz folks is in progress.

“Oh, I don’t think it’s a war so much,” he told the New York Times. “I think it’s just about doing a better job of making ketchup.”

For the record, I only buy store-brand mustard and I prefer Hunt's catsup.  I just don't like getting caught up in these arguments.