Yes that’s right. I am anti-Worcestershire.
No just kidding.
I’m saying I’ve discovered we don’t need all the sauces.
But let me explain this with a quick story.
I’ve always been relatively careful about not loading up my kitchen with every random type of food item. Even though it did take me forever to start meal planning… however casual.
But when I had to consider actually cleaning out the refrigerator (ok, basically just when we moved apartments, I’m not that much of an overachiever), I noticed that this appliance was fairly cluttered. And one culprit was a bunch of items that had been used once or twice, but they were past their due date and I had to throw them.
I never really had a conscious mental conversation about this issue, but if I had, it would have looked like this:
Q: “Why do we have these barely used items that we have to throw out?”
A: “Because they only get used once or twice for one or two recipes.”
Q: “Ok, so what do we need to do… Cook those recipes more often?”
Genius, right…
Well, that’s one solution, but there was a reason it wasn’t happening. Those one or two recipes just weren’t part of our staple recipe set. I could have made them staples. But for this season of our life, they just aren’t. Let’s set aside the fact that I only recently realized we’d had staple recipes at all, for years…
One of these non-staple recipes was a very delicious marinade for grilling chicken, from a friend of mine. A fabulous idea, except that we hadn’t had a grill of our own, ever. I guess I just wanted that delicious chicken, and I tried broiling it in the oven once, with very small success.
Anyway, I finally realized that going outside the staples took extra thought, planning, ingredients.
So finally, after (mostly) decluttering the rest of the house, I was struck with the inspiration and boldness needed. I threw out the Worcestershire sauce, and didn’t replace it. And the pickle relish. And some other stuff that I can’t even recall now.
But what if you want to make something that requires that special item?
Well I’ll tell you a secret. You may not need it.
One day, struck with a fit of I can do it better myself, I wanted to make chicken barbeque meat in the crockpot for a homemade chicken barbeque pizza. But all the good recipes called for Worcestershire sauce.
So I’d thrown out the W sauce too fast, right?
Well I had already planned on my pizza meal, with no backup. Yes I know… genius strikes again. So I was just going to have to wing it. So, I fished around in my fridge and realized I had soy sauce in there, and I decided to try that.
Did it taste exactly like chicken barbeque? Probably not. Was it still good and edible? You betcha.
The point of this story is that we don’t need all the things. That goes for sauces, condiments, ingredients too.
Do you have to get rid of stuff? Of course you don’t have to. And if you’re a major foodie chief, it might not make sense for you to do any of this.
But Ma’s just saying. If you want a more manageable kitchen, you have to figure this out for yourself. And sorry, I can’t give you a list of items to trash. Take stock of your life season, your staples, what you use, what’s working for you. What’s taking up space in your kitchen to the point that you never feel like cleaning it. Build your life around your staples and let the rest go.
So what’s in your fridge?
