For me it used to be coffee, but it wasn’t just the coffee itself, it was the coffee and the cream or creamer as well. Had to have both or I’d just be completely out of sorts.
I weaned myself off coffee in the last year, though. I will have it occasionally but I know longer feel totally weird without the taste of coffee in my mouth first thing.
Now my thing is citric acid; I prefer tart drinks no matter what the flavor (I even add lemon to Coke), and there is no drink I have ever come across which is sufficiently tart for me, especially if I’m drinking zero calorie. And a teaspoon of straight citric acid added to any fruit or lemon or squirt or whatever makes almost any stupid soda totally refreshing and delicious. And I like to have a libation almost constantly during summer. So when I run out of the stuff, I go a little nuts, particularly since it’s not easy to find locally and I generally have to order it online and wait for delivery.
I also consider my pantry as good as empty if I’m out of butter, but that’s generally easier to deal with.
Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Not for me but for my partner. In her opinion there is no savoury dish that cannot be improved by a squirt of the red stuff. If I’m being paranoid I might suspect that it’s an insult to my culinary skills (I do about 99% of the cooking in our household), but she insists it isn’t, so as long as she’s happy…
For me it’s probably flat-leaf parsley. I like to put a little sprig on my plate or sprinkle a small handful over most dishes… looks festive!
Not really. I always have plenty of food and drinks and condiments so if I don’t have something, I have something else. Probably the only thing that comes close is eggs. I don’t eat eggs very often, but I always want to have eggs. I throw away a lot of eggs.
Some kind of sliced meat I can stuff into a sandwich. I don’t really care exactly what sandwich meat is in the fridge and I do like to mix it up but there better be something in there.
We typically have to have onions and garlic on hand; it’s remarkably hard to find dishes that DON’T require one or both. And we’ve tried- MIL gets migraines from alliums, so we scour the internet and cookbooks for recipes not containing onions, garlic, shallots or leeks. It’s much more difficult than you might think.
Beyond onions and garlic, I’d say we tend to keep the following generally on hand:
[ul]
[li]diet soda[/li][li]fish sauce[/li][li]fruit of some kind [/li][li]lemons and limes [/li][li]milk (for the boys)[/li][li]ketchup[/li][li]mustard[/li][li]jam of some kind[/li][li]beer and/or wine[/li][li]staple foods (butter, sugar, flour, rice, dried pasta, etc…)[/li][li]dried spices/herbs[/li][/ul]
Food – some snack-sized bags of peanuts. There are times when I just have to have one. When I get down to a couple bags left I will go shopping NOW.
Drink - unsweetened iced tea. I can’t remember the last time there wasn’t a jug in the fridge. Sun or fresh brewed when I can, powdered mixes when I can’t.