Almost every house has common staples like rice, bread or pasta, chicken or beef, eggs, etc. But what about your own staples? The ones you were raised with or raised your kids with, but aren’t really normal in other families?

I keep several foods/ingredients readily on hand, and they’re so important to me that they really might be a part of my personality. Check out some of these staples yourself and let me know if you can relate.

Canned Tomatoes: We only get garden-fresh tomatoes a few months out of the year, and I really don’t like buying tomatoes from the grocery store in the middle of the winter. They taste like they’re disappointed in me. But good canned tomatoes are good forever.

Canned tomatoes are picked at the peak of their freshness and preserved immediately. Because of that, if you stick with a good brand, you get top-notch flavor and nutrition. Personally, I only buy san marzano whole tomatoes. San marzano tomatoes are long, skinny, and have maximum flesh and minimum seeds. Perfect for… literally anything involving cooked tomatoes. Plus, getting whole tomatoes verifies quality. If you buy diced tomatoes, it’s possible (probable?) that at least some of the tomatoes in that can were diced instead of being left whole because they were of inferior quality, but it was easy to hide their flaws by dicing them before you bought them.

One last thing, if you’re buying san marzano tomatoes like me, be careful that they’re not merely “san marzano style" tomatoes. There’s a big difference, and you can’t just replace the real thing with a cheap counterfeit.

Vinegars and Citrus: At all times, I have apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, and white wine vinegar as well as a regularly cycling stock of fresh lemons whenever they’re in season (which means yes, in cold months, I just default to my vinegars until lemons are back at their peak. Again, I don’t like buying out of season).

Why all the vinegar? First off, acid is likely the most overlooked component of any good meal. I’ve learned by now how to incorporate acidic ingredients liberally into my cooking, and now that my eyes have been opened, I can never go back. If you ever find me experimenting in the kitchen, it will almost always be with one of my three main vinegars near at hand, carefully selected to complement the dish in mind.

Pickled Onions: Speaking of vinegar, how could I ever forget my pickled onions? My article about pickled onions is one of the first I ever wrote for Cook’n, and for good reason. A chef can let out a ton of personality with their pickled onions—some like them super thin and extra sweet while others want them cut super thick and with extra-sharp vinegar. I like them somewhere in the middle and seasoned with a bay leaf.

Fermented Hot Sauce: Another article I wrote sometime back, there is nothing quite as delicious as healthy fermented food that you made yourself. And of all my fermented foods, my favorite is my hot sauce.

Garnishing Sauces: Whether it be my patent-pending everything sauce or one of the many styles of barbecue sauce that I love to make, you will always find one or two homemade sauces on my fridge door. It was totally by accident, but we’re at the point by now that my sauces are always my daughter’s favorite part of the meal. With that being said, I never plan my meal around a sauce. I simply make what an occasion demands, and often that occasion also calls for a sauce that very naturally goes with the dishes I come up with.

Anchovies: There are few things more pleasurable than secretly feeding someone anchovies and watching their face melt as they gush over how delicious the food is. From salad dressings, to pizza sauces, to soups and more, I regularly find myself mincing up anchovies and adding them to my food. I don’t use them every day—or even every week—but they have become a constant enough companion that I always make sure to have some on hand. I feel like we owe anchovies a big apology. There’s a reason certain regions of Italy love them.

Anyway, that’s that. If you haven’t fallen in love with these staples already, now’s your chance! On the other hand, what are your staples? Let me know in the comments below.