“I don’t want you to think of this as an intervention,” my daughter Kelly began. She was walking from our panty towards Suzen and me. She had a jar in each hand.

“Have you read the dates here?” Kelly questioned.

That’s bad. I turned to Suzen. She turned to me with one of her “that’s supposed to be your job” look.

“Uh, Kelly,” I started, “I may have missed a thing or two.”

“This jar is almost from the last century,” Kelly noted. “And,” she continued, “have your read the ingredients? You have to stop buying this stuff.”

We built our pantry fifteen years ago. Twelve years ago, I added shelves. They are filled. Side to side. Front to back.

Suzen and I like stuff. Condiment stuff. Pickle stuff. Relish stuff. Vinaigrette stuff. We like them, we love them, we buy them, we put them up on the shelf, and we forget them.

“You need to start making this stuff for yourselves,” Kelly said.

We nodded in agreement. How could we disagree with her? Suzi taught her food. I taught her cocktails. Somehow in the decades, Kelly seemed to have advanced beyond us both.

“I can help you,” Kelly finished.

Two weeks later we got this book, signed by the author, Erin Coopey. The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook has chapters for those things Suzi and I love, that you love:

• Condiments
• Nut Butters and Spreads
• Salad Dressings
• Stocks
• Relished and Refrigerator Pickles
• Chips, Dips, and Dunks

So here you find recipes for “basic” but vital elements in our food lives. Things like:

Tartar Sauce

Dijon Mustard

Lemon Curd

Cashew Butter

Garlic Dill Vinegar

Garlic Vinegar

Chicken Stock

Beef Stock

Corn Relish

Sweet Pickle Relish

Scallion Dip

Spinach Dip

Ah, these recipes sound so familiar, so basic, so common. What makes them worth exploring in this book? Oh, lots of things. Lots.

I hold in my hand a bottle of ketchup, a good upscale ketchup that Suzi and I love. I won’t name it, but I want to give you the list of ingredients, which come in the order of most used to least:

• Water
• Tomato Paste
• Pure Cane Sugar
• Glucose
• Habanero Peppers [this a habanero ketchup just so you know]
• Salt
• Starch
• Acetic Acid
• Garlic
• Citric Acid
• Onion
• Ascorbic Acid

I have no idea what “starch” means for why it’s there. I guess some food science guru figured out that you need both citric and ascorbic acid. I have to repeat this: the ketchup tastes wonderful. But those ingredients give me pause.

Now let’s consider the recipe for ketchup in The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook:

• 2 ¼ pounds plum tomatoes
• 1 ½ cups distilled white vinegar
• 2 ½ teaspoons coarse sea salt or kosher salt
• 1 cup (200 g) sugar
• 1 tablespoon grated onion or 1 teaspoon onion powder
• ½ teaspoon mustard powder
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ¼ teaspoon ground allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Well, the sugar is still there but life seem pretty different here. Real tomatoes and not tomato paste, for example. Spices, not starch.

In the headnotes for her ketchup recipe, author Erin Coopey says that “You’ll think you’re eating a national brand — minus the high-fructose corn syrup!” No, kidding. Suzi and I have transformed our ketchup lives. This recipe really is better and, more, it gives us leeway to experiment. Some more mustard, lots more clove, a little less vinegar, a different style of plum tomatoes. What we don’t do is start making our ketchup by getting water and tomato paste ready. We start from scratch, we take our time, and we relish the delights.

I hope this one example gives you the motivation to look at this clever book and enjoy it page after page. Suzi and I do.