What Items Are Always Stocked in Your Fridge?

Hello, and welcome back to What’s Cooking?, the open thread where you get to share all of your brilliant thoughts, advice, recipes, and opinions on all things food-related. This week I want to talk about how you stock your fridge, with a focus on those foods, beverages, and condiments you are never without.

I’ve always been incredibly interested in the mundane details of other peoples’ lives and—given my interest in all things edible—borderline obsessed with the contents of other peoples’ refrigerators. Though my fridge is usually occupied by whatever sous-vide experiment I’m working on that week, there are a few things it is always stocked with no matter what.

Besides my requisite Diet Coke, my icebox almost always contains pickles (cornichons or Clausen halves, depending on my mood), soy sauce, miso, eggs, onions, carrots, olives, some sort of cheese, and sour cream. There’s usually other stuff in there too, but those are the must-haves. Now that you know mine, I want to hear yours. Here are some questions to get you going:

• What condiments do you always have on hand, no matter what? Seriously, I cannot live without sour cream.
• Do you keep any kind of fruit preserves around? What flavors? I like strawberry.
• Is there any food more convenient than the egg? Is it possible to live without them? (I mean, I know people do it, but I don’t understand how.)
• What about beverages? Is there a special soda or seltzer in your life? Diet Coke is always around, but I also require a good bit of La Croix.
• Do you keep a lot of meat around? I used to always have chicken thighs on hand, but now I just buy meat the day I plan to eat it, mainly because my fridge is so small.
• What fruits do you keep stocked in the crisper? There isn’t one fruit I purchase consistently, as I usually buy whatever’s in season. Right now I’m very into peaches.
• Are you one of those lucky ducks with a refrigerator dedicated solely to beverages? What a life that must be.

As always, feel free to stray from these questions, and talk about any other foods, condiments, or sourdough starters that hang out in your refrigerator. You can talk about non-foods too. Don’t some people keep batteries in their refrigerator? Or did I imagine that?