Back when I was married, oh so long ago, it was around this time every year when my ex-wife and I would make a couple hundred jars of a special salsa we concocted together, passing them out as Christmas gifts while keeping enough to get us through the year.
And while I haven’t made any salsa in about five or six years—maybe next year, I tell myself every year, wound never fully closing—one of my favorite gifts to both give and receive are locally made salsas and dips. Outside of Texas or New Mexico, obviously, Oklahoma’s got a pretty darn good selection of homemade sauces, a collection of which is some of the best I’ve ever sampled. Some are treasures you might only find once, sold out of the back of a truck in a parking lot at the 7-11 on SW 29th and May, while others are small-time heroes that have made the leap to retail chain grocery stores, often found hidden behind the Pace and Tostitos on the very top shelf.