House of sauce

I don't know why, but our refrigerator is overcrowded with sauces, condiments and pickled things.

Today I had to perform an olive purge. There were brined kalamatas in a jar, Greek olives in oil. There were plastic containers from, respectively, the olive bars at Gelsons, Vons, and the deli at Whole Foods, each containing assorted, spiced Tunisian, little green picholine, and oil-dried herbed black olives.

There were 5 jars of green stuffed olives for serving with martinis. We had Spanish olives stuffed with pimientos, garlic-stuffed olives, bleu cheese stuffed olives, almond stuffed olives, and tipsy olives bottled in vermouth. Many jars had only two or three olives floating in their briny liquid.

Combine the duplicates, toss the ones that have been around a little too long - I ended up tossing 8 jars into the recycling container!

Then there are pickles. Kosher dills, bread-and-butter pickles, gherkins, hot pickled pepperocinis, sauerkraut, sweet pickle relish, muffaletta olive relish, Indian mango pickle, pickled pearl onions (for serving with Gibsons), Major Grey's chutney, and home-made Moroccan preserved lemon.

Our refrigerator contains so many varieties of sauces it could be considered a veritable Sauce Museum. Worcestershire, teriyaki, tartar, cocktail, Tabasco, Frank's, "Mo Hotta Mo Betta", harissa, Pickapeppa, Thai curry paste, black bean sauce, nuoc mam, soy sauce, hoisin, ketchup, and at least 4 different bottles of barbecue sauce [The Man I Love] got in a mail-order assortment package.

Green salsa, fresh salsa ("fire roasted tomatoes") Pace Picante sauce, and not one but TWO bottles of Jardine's chipotle salsa. Both open.

French's mustard, grainy mustard, Phillipe's mustard, Grey Poupon, Chinese mustard, Colman's mustard and horseradish.

Without intending to sow marital discord, I feel perfectly justified in blaming this state of affairs on [The Man I Love]. He is constitutionally incapable of leaving a store without pickles or sauces. I recall one shopping trip when I unpacked Jamaican mango hot sauce, kim-chee and Texas-style pickled okra from the same bag.

And all I asked him to do was pick up milk on the way home from work.