Do you have a food or drink or condiment that you HAVE to have in your home at all times?

JJ don’t throw those eggs out. I had the same problem. Eggs approaching the toss out date. I learned to make pickled eggs with them. Delicious! Lots of recipes via the internet. Give it a try.

condiment: mayonnaise, A sandwich isn’t fit to eat without it. I prefer mixing a little mustard into my mayo but I can do without the mustard in a pinch.

milk: otherwise there’s no breakfast and I get cranky when I’m hungry.

sharp cheddar cheese: I love a wedge every night for a snack

beverage: coffee grounds that’s a must every morning

Bottled water.

I give my daughters at least one bottle each when they go to school and make sure every Saturday that we have enough for the coming week, preferably also for the beginning of the following one. Having enough of them for two full weeks is a luxury that makes me feel… relieved. I have the same attitude with everything they need for school (their bread, cheese and salami for instance) but water is the only item that I really worry about.

As for me, I like to have balsamic vinegar around. Over the years, I have come to add it to many sauces, almost always with great results.

Soda water (cheap and unflavored)
Diet pop (usually Diet 7-Up, Diet Sprite, or Diet Sierra Mist)
Ketchup (preferably Heinz)
Regular yellow mustard
Sweet-hot mustard
BBQ sauce (preferably Longhorn, a local brand)
Tabasco or Sriracha sauce
Italian salad dressing
Paul Newman Spaghetti Sauce (preferably Marinara style)
Pasta (usually spaghetti)
Skim milk
Cranberry juice cocktail (straight or mixed with another fruit juice)
Nabisco Soda Crackers (Unsalted Tops)
Non-fat vanilla yogurt
Butter/Margarine
Breakfast cereal (whatever favorite brand name that’s on sale)
Splenda (for my cereal or if I find the coffee I’ve bought at a nearby drive-through stand needs sweetening)

/Yeah, I live the high life.

//Also (almost forgot this), vodka (mid-range like Sobieski or Smirnoff)

This. Word for word.

At least 3 types of cheese.

Beer.

I have “beer” at home, but I also have “BEER” (expensive beer saved for extra special occasions). The last time I ran out of “beer” my gf’s brother arrived for a visit while I was out. He drank three bomber bottles of “BEER” that cost $40 -$60 a bottle. When I came home with two cases of “beer” he was pretty drunk, happy to see his Coors Light, and complained about the crap in the big bottles. :frowning:

Mayonnaise.
Coffee.
Italian bread (in the freezer).
Diet Coke.
Heinz ketchup.
Cheddar cheese.
Chips of some kind.
Ice cream - they sell ice cream for DOGS, for cryin out loud, why shouldn’t I have ice cream for me, at all times?
for myself, pistachio nuts and dark chocolate, a little of either is a nice treat.

*Go-to herbs, such as thyme, dill, herbs de provence, oregano, etc.
*Mayo, mustard, ketchup, in that order.
*Homemade pickles, or things start to get ugly around here.
*Coffee
*Butter
*Tomato paste
*Local whole grain bread
*Olive oil
*Wine

And yet, you let him live. All I can say is things a gentleman shouldn’t say about another man’s girlfriend and her talents in certain areas, which is the only explanation. :stuck_out_tongue:

This. My own concoction, which has about 1/4 the sugar of the commercial stuff, plus cardamom, cloves, ginger and a dash of red pepper.

Also coffee, extra sharp white cheddar, spicy V8 and diet cherry pepsi.

One should always have a bottle of red and a bottle of white…

and…at least…

Milk, eggs, butter, salt, pepper, bay leaves, oregano, sugar, flour, veg/olive oil, a pepper sauce, bullion, taters, maters, onions, a cheese, crackers, bread, mayo, mustard, ketchup, garlic, lemon, limes, tortillas.

I guess anything else is a little more specified like, horseradish or FRESH CILANTRO.

You cant have real tacos without cilantro, limes, jalapenos, cumin and tortillas. So, I always have that on hand. :wink:

Let’s see - the essentials:

Soy sauce - enhances everything
Lemons or lemon juice
At least one kind of bread
Butter
Olive oil
Coarse salt
Whole black pepper
At least one kind of cheese
Sour cream
A container of Co2 for the Soda Stream - got to have my carbonated water.

Ketchup. I jokingly suggested to my wife when we got married that I wanted her to promise “to have ketchup in the fridge at all times” in our wedding vows. I used to own a t-shirt that said “I put ketchup on my ketchup”, and whenever someone commented on my shirt I would tell them “I also put ketchup on the ketchup that’s on my ketchup. Because I am hard-core!”. I am not as reliant on it as I used to be, but I still can’t imagine eating certain foods without it.
Hot Sauce. Doesn’t matter specifically what brand, but I have to have a milder version like Melinda’s and a hotter one like El Yucateco. There is a Mexican grocery store that sells small bottles of Chipolte Sauce, and if it were closer to me, that would be my must-have-at-all-times item.
Iced Coffee mix. There’s been different versions of these over the years. I started with Nescafe Coffee Syrup, and when they stopped making that I found a different one. Currently it’s Maxwell House Iced French Vanilla Singles. It’s a powdered mix that I put in my milk every morning. There’s only one store I know of that carries it, and there is at least 2 other shoppers that also like it, and clean it out whenever it’s stocked. Fortunately I know the grocery supervisor responsible for ordering it, and he will get it in for me if it’s out of stock.

Fresh fruit. In late spring and summer, it’s cherries, cantaloupes and some sort of berries. In the fall, it’s a couple of different varieties of apples (Empire and Granny Smith). Citrus in the winter and spring.

I’ve got to have orange juice. I drink a lot of coffee, but don’t have withdrawals when I don’t get it. I’ve had OJ almost every morning since I was a little kid.

These are the things I use most days and will make a special trip to the store to pick up, if out:

[ul]
[li]Coffee, and both black and green tea. I’m not fussy and am happy with instant coffee and teabags; on most days I’ll have one mug of each beverage, spread over the hours. Milk in the coffee but not in the tea.[/li][li]Red wine vinegar. [/li][li]Hot sauce (whatever’s on sale).[/li][li]A sweet onion or two. I can remember when we got Vidalias for only a few weeks out of the year, and had to make do with mushy onions the rest of the year. Having the sweet onions (whether Vidalia or some other designation) available year-round is one of the great pleasures of life in the 21st century. (!)[/li][li]Bell peppers; I use a lot of them and particularly love the red ones.[/li][li]Salsa or pico de gallo.[/li][/ul]
There are other items that were daily “must haves” in years past (but they’re not practical where I live now, and/or they are just too fattening):
[ul]
[li]SOURDOUGH BREAD (how I miss it!)[/li][li]Mostly-Chinese food items (I’d choose different ones on different visits) in a takeout box from a place I used to live near.[/li][li]Cold cereal with milk–Rice Chex was a favorite. I eat too much of it so don’t buy it anymore.[/li][/ul]

Instant coffee, usually Nescafe.
I like hot, brewed coffee just fine but I’m usually just after the drug, especially weekday mornings.
A bit of powder in the cup, some hot tap water, a quick couple swigs and I’m recaffeinated.

Eh, as another egg lover but infrequent egg preparer, I’ll say you should give months old eggs a try, especially if you’re just tossing them out.
Honestly, I’ve never, ever had an egg go bad.
Crack them into a bowl and sniff deeply.
See? No difference, they’re fine.

I only have had it happen once.

A few thanksgivings ago it was my job to make three sweet potato pies. I had my biggest mixing bowl full of everything but the eggs. The last egg I cracked literally exploded. Apparently, it had fallen to the back of the nest where it sat for months (we have hens).

So, there is no way to remove a bad egg that has exploded into the bowl and all over the kitchen. I was retching. I had a small piece of eggshell schrapnel stuck in my forearm. I had to open windows, the odor was so nasty. I took the bowl to the barn and put the pie filling in the manure wagon, then realized I had to dump and bury it all.

When my gf’s mom asked me about my lack of pies, I looked her in the eye and said, “don’t even fucking ask.” Luckily she likes me.

That’s what the separate bowl and sniff test if for.

As I understand it, eggs aren’t even ever refrigerated in most of the world.
I’ve heard that long distance sailboat crews keep eggs at [whatever room temperature would be on a boat] with the other dry goods. And this is in some pretty tropical environments. They do smear them with petroleum jelly to prevent them from drying out, though.

I totally understand being weirded out by months old eggs. Growing up, eggs were considered ultra-perishable and one bite of, say, raw cookie dough was the next worst thing to brain cancer. It simply isn’t true.