Every year or so, when the stains on the shelves become too large or too tacky to ignore, I resign myself to cleaning out our fridge. And every year, I marvel at the seriously impressive amount of condiments we keep in our door. In fact, I am confident that there are few households that consist of two people the majority of the time, that have this many condiments.
Think I'm wrong? Let's take a closer look at the condiments in our fridge: tartar sauce, Newman's lite balsamic vinaigrette, Newman's lite honey mustard dressing, garlic-stuffed olives, bread-and-butter-chips (pickles), light mayonnaise, fat-free thousand island dressing, parmesan grated toppping, tabasco sauce. That was the first door-shelf. Second shelf in the door: ranch dressing, light creamy ceasear dressing, cocktail sauce, Thai green curry paste, creamy style horseradish, ketchup, classic yellow mustard, Gulden's spicy brown mustard, Grey Poupon mustard, and sweet Vidalia onion barbeque sauce. Third shelf: less-sodium soy sauce, sweet relish, red hot sweet chili sauce, A1 steak sauce, sweet midget pickles, garlic-dill cucumber slices, and golden peperoncini.
And you know what? They all get used. All of them, on a regular basis.
At any rate, what I have been wondering about is if this love for condiments is an American thing, or if all of my American friends just happen to love condiments as much as we do, while my Dutch friends just don't care to have a choice between five types of dressing, three types of pickles, and two types of mustard.
When I lived by myself, my fridge door was always depressingly empty. I think I had all of one salad dressing in my fridge, if I was lucky, a bottle of ketchup, and some mustard. When I met husband-dear, however, his fridge door was bulging with not only the above-mentioned bottles and jars, but augmented with more and different types of steak sauce, barbeque sauces, and a true cornucopia of stuffed olives, pickles, and peppers. When our two households merged, we found a happy medium, although out fridge door is still stuffed to the gills with, well, things that we eat, apparently.
So I guess my question is, is this an American thing? Do Americans have a strange obsession with dressings, sauces, and sides that Dutch people just don't care for? Or is this another example of the "if you've got the space, you'll use it" phenomenon which also explains Americans' love for large beds, large chairs, and large couches? Perhaps Americans love to have lots of different foods to choose from, as evidence by the endless cereal/cleaning supplies/juice aisles in the grocery store.
In all honesty, I don't know. So I'm looking to expand my sample, and am going to ask you, my dear readers, to open up your fridges, and take a quick inventory of your condiments. Do you have a lot? A little? Somewhere in between? And are you Dutch or Belgian? Or something else altogether? If you could report your findings back to me, that would be greatly appreciated.
7 comments:
Gosh, I could have written this. We cleaned our fridge this week (had, since I dropped a coke can and it exploded into the fridge). I too marveled at the amount of condiments! I threw a bunch away, so saying what is in there now would not give an accurate picture of our normal volume, but it is still full enough. I have heard a fridge being called a condiment holder.
To answer your question: I think if is because of size that there are so many. No chance of trying this in a Dutch size fridge.
Eh. Blue elephant Thai dipping sauce. 2 regular sambal manis. Finish pickled mushrooms. HP sauce. Mild Limburg mustard. tabasco and mild tabasco. Dijon mustard. IKEA mustard sauce wit dill. Four different kinds of Hottie Sambal. IKEA Horseradish sauce. Lidl Mint sauce. Silverskin onions. AH French Fries sauce. Sandwich pickles from Sweden. DVL Mayo Royale and Maille mustard mayonnaise. Oh, and Swedish Lemon mayonaise, 2 kinds. Plus a jar of capers. Do capers count? Maybe I ought to clean my fridge too. Thank you ever so much. P.S. I am your cousin and I am dutch. Am I disqualified now?
Our fridge is full of jars and bottles of things that we may or may not use. That salad dressing we bought and didn't care for? Still there. I should probably clean out my fridge this weekend, now that I'm shamefully admitting the ridiculousness that lies within. Oh, and I'm your standard American mix, haha.
Perhaps we're not typical Dutch but we do have quite a lot of condiments in the fridge. Or outside the fridge if they don't need to be kept refrigerated.
Mayonnaise, yogonaise (yoghurt based mayonnaise), ketchup, tabasco, coarse dutch mustard, french mustard, soy sauce, sambal, thai red curry paste, thai green curry paste, thai tom yum paste, indian mixed pickle, indian lime pickle, mango chutney, another mango chutney, wasabi paste, plain vinegar, balsamico, red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, walnut oil, pickled ginger...and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. Almost all are regularly used as well.
And you what, you need a lot of basic things from the list above just for regular cooking and making your own dressings. So maybe it's not that much after all.
You want a list of herbs and spices as well? :)
Hhhmm..apparently I've just been checking out the wrong friends' fridge, because Marije and Steeph obviously don't meet the Dutch standard I was used to. I would love to say, maybe it's a family thing, but obviously that doesn't apply either. Hmm. Maybe it's just me.
Annemiek> don't you -hate- it when something like that happens, and you suddenly HAVE to clean out the fridge?
Courtney> we're the same way. I'm not sure why we have ranch dressing in there, since we never use it, but it's there. A lot of our friends, when they PCS, give us their stuff, and that might also explain some of the stuff in there..
I'm Dutch/Indonesian, hubby is American, and I think it's definitely an American thing because before I met him, I only had ketchup, plain mustard and mayo in the fridge door (and only one door ;-)). I don't even have to check my two-door fridge, I know what we have and it's a lot: Horseradish, red beet horseradish, worchestershire sauce, ketchup, plain mustard, grey poupon mustard, wasabi paste, mayonaise (dutch zaanse), three asian style hot sauces, a mexican artisan hot sauce, artisan mustard dressing, pickled milkweed pods, pickled galangal, some type of chutney, green pepper paste, red pepper jelly (great on bagel with cream cheese), jalapeno peppers, capers, gerkins, soy, sweet 'n sour, ranch dressing, oyster sauce and 2 bbq sauces. We actually use all of it.
A bit late because we were on holiday, but have you thought about this in a different way? I don't have any salad sauces in my fridge, because I make the sauces myself everytime. So I do have a bottle of balsamic vinegar and a bottle of olive oil, mustard and a whole lot of other ingredients, but I don't have the kant-en-klaar sauce. Except for mayonaise and ketchup that is. Could that be a reason why Dutch people have less condiments in their fridge? (if that's even true)
Post a Comment