fnord wrote:

Even funnier when it's an accident. We've been laughing about this for a few years in Canadoo. Also, our news organs tell you how to do it - just add salt. I use finely ground Pink Himalayan sea salt, but any salt will do. I chose that particular article because the practice could well have been invented by our own injenious inguns, who can wump up heap-big firewater from the most surprisingest ingredients. Cumbowl's Soup company once gave the autochthones of the Sault (rhymes with "poo") Lookout Zone an award for buying more Cumbowl's Tomato Soup than any other cummunity in North America. Turned out the lovable redskins were buying Cumbowl's sweet sweet slop by the case, hauling it deep into the woods on their dogsleds, and cheerfully fermenting it on their stoves. Probably someone here has tried fermented Cumbowl's Tomato Blech, and can tell us what it's like. I bet it's delicious. I'm afraid I have no online ref. for that alpine anecdote, but I do so swear that I did once read this tale in an olden but still most reputable book. (It was give me by a dumb and desperate female nutrition student. She had rugose nipples like soft brown walnuts, as well as several hundred dollars, for which I scrivened an overnight essay on the diet of the cupric indigenes, before and after contact.)