Making Potions in a Traveling Show

I have no idea why folks think chefs are obsessive compulsives. No idea at all. In fact, you might get the wrong impression from taking a small, casual glance at the various sauces in my refrigerator, a small sampling of which is pictured here:

Ginger syrup, a handful of confits (onion, shallot, garlic, habanero, jalapeno, thai chili), barbeque sauces that serve as a roadmap for the various ways they do it in the South (red: North Carolina; yellow, South Carolina, white, Alabama; organge, south Florida), various pickled things like bread and butter pickles and radishes, and sauerkraut, and pickled preserved lemons with anise and fenugreek, homemade vinegar, reduction sauces, the list really does go on and on. It goes on so long, I sometimes forget all the shit I have concocted and stored back there. Fortunately, my mom brought us up to give little stock to expiration dates. Hell, the well-known Charleston chef Sean Brock is on record talking about his base of vinegars that go back 40 years. OK, so Southerners are known to spin a yarn or two.

Let’s not label it, especially something as cold and clinical as OCD. Can we say lovers of umami with a penchant for creativity?