What food or food-related Christmas gifts this year?

My youngest sister got me a bottle of tupelo honey and a tin of Moravian ginger cookies from Williams-Sonoma.
And my other sister got me and Gail the two-volume set of Julia Child's Mastering the Art Of French Cooking.
For those who've never had it, tupelo honey is only produced from the Deep South's tupelo gum forests, primarily found in swampy areas. It is one of my favorite honeys for flavor. In the movie Ulee's Gold, Peter Fonda's character is a beekeeper working the tupelo swamps.

My husband, bless him, gave me Thomas Keller's new Ad Hoc book and a set of beautiful Forge de Laguiole steak knives. Can't wait to peruse the book and cook some meat, hee hee! cheers, Bonnie

Since we are leaving Japan for India - I loaded up on a few things I wanted and "gave" them to my wife.

- a whole tempura set including the pot, the special chopsticks for it and then the dish to "dry" the tempura in

- a "shabu shabu" pot - very specialized

- several really cool JApanese knives

Ladies - lest you worry - she also did extremley well in the jewelry, clothes/handbags, sentimental (I made to cut out collages of photos from our time in JApan with the kids and her firends mixed throughout) and also a cool new iMAc - the i5 Core with 27" screen which really rocks!!

I got a few cast iron skillets, a blender, a sandwich press (which I asked for but my wife didn't really understand since I don't eat much bread at home. Maybe that will change!), various wine implements.. Not bad.

But, I also gave out plenty of food-related Christmas gifts as that is the area I know best and since I'm spending a bit of money for Christmas I might as well dispense it to the industries I care about. So we gave out a bunch of high-end chocolate, special sea salts, olive oil, tea...

-Len's son sent us a lobster feast from Legal Seafood in Boston. It arrived on the 23rd, which was perfect. It had lobsters, littlenecks, clam chowder, crab cakes and Boston Cream pie. Oh my!
-His daughter gave us a generous gift card for a nice steakhouse out here in the desert.
-My brother and sis-in-law sent Shari's Berries. (Chocolate covered strawberries--very nice)
-Mother-in-law knows sometimes I like to make one egg for myself for breakfast so gave me the cutest little one-egg tephlon frying pan.
-Len gave me "Chocolates from Around the World" (among other things). I think he's wondering when I'm going to break the seal so he can get into them. He also got us three good wines to try.
-A bottle of Shelter "Headwater" Cabernet as a hostess gift from best friend. Can't wait to try this one--I've read about the winery.
-Another best friend brought over her homemade Mexican wedding cakes and espresso bean shortbread cookies. Yum. (These keep calling me from across the room.)

We sent a mixed pack of Wolferman's to the in-laws.

Santa brought kurbiskerne pesto (pumpkin seed) and hazelnut bark from Austria for my partner, and a whole lotta chocolate-covered orange peel (Jacques Torres, Teuscher) for me. Oh, and he brought Hanukkah gelt!

Among the non-edibles, for me, is a Hungarian cookbook, "The Shameless Carnivore", and a copy of "Chef on Fire". (Hi, Chef!)

A 4-lb bag of pistachios and an OXO digital kitchen scale.

We sent our sibs a gift packs from North Country Smoke House http://ncsmokehouse.com/index.php . One of them sent us a basket from Wine Country Gift Baskets (‘eh). Another sent a great selection of blue cheese from http://www.igourmet.com. One daughter brought an excellent basket of goodies she put together herself. Another gave us a gift card for Chili’s. We gave the three daughters who like them Stollens. The fourth daughter got a couple of pieces of her china. We gave each other a Scanpan sauté pan and saucepan with covers.

As far as food related gifts, one of my colleagues gave me some cans of pate and foie gras that she brought back from a recent trip to France. Santa sent me a brushed stainless steel Cuisinart convection toaster oven (Thanks to Jenise for her comments in my thread about convection toaster ovens. Santa must have read those comments ). Jody gave me a gift certificate to a fancy French restaurant and another gift certificate to a fancy Italian restaurant. My Great Aunt and Uncle sent me a gift box from Usinger’s. Santa also sent me a cool mahogany pepper mill.

Larry Greenly sent me directions to a restaurant in Phoenix.

My Great Aunt and Uncle sent me a gift box from Usinger’s.

Dave, would you say these are the best mail-order Brats? I sent them to my Dad once and he loved them. As you know, he is from Wisconsin, but lives in FL. Just wondering if there is an even better source out there...

My Great Aunt and Uncle sent me a gift box from Usinger’s.

Dave, would you say these are the best mail-order Brats? I sent them to my Dad once and he loved them. As you know, he is from Wisconsin, but lives in FL. Just wondering if there is an even better source out there...

Carrie, your Father is lucky to have a Daughter like you. Usinger brats are the Bugatti Veyron of the brat world. There is Usinger and everything else is imitation. If your Father ever went to Braves, Brewers or Packer tailgate parties, chances are if that the people there were serious about brats they were grilling Usinger’s. They are the best and I do not even need to put an “IMHO” in front of that statement.

Nice gift for your Father and I'll bet he really appreciated it.

[Jenise]

We had a severely scaled back Christmas this year and promised each other not to do gifts. I joked in another thread about getting door knobs for Christmas but no joke, I *did* get doorknobs. Nine of them, enough to replace every doorknob in the house. They're square, and significantly more expensive than the more 'sensible' choice. But Bob must always go overboard, so he also got me the Brahmin wallet I'd been drooling over from afar, and a Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker (there, that's food-related).

I also got some homemade cookies from my friend Chris, and a Neiman Marcus cookbook from my friend Mary.

[Jenise]

- a "shabu shabu" pot - very specialized

Tell me about that. I adore shabu shabu, both the ritual and the result, but am unaware of what the specialized pot is.

[Jenise]

Oh, and he brought Hanukkah gelt!

(Hi, Chef!)

I'm not Jewish--what's a Haukkah gelt?

The Francophile got a slow cooker. He is now in charge of cooking soups and casseroles.

Somehow, out of the over 1000 cookbooks in the house, we did not have a single volume by Julia Child. That's now remedied since I received the two volumes of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". Also got a couple of new paring knives (the one type of knife we really needed).

And Dave - THANKS for the info on Usinger's brats. My wife periodically is desperate for a good brat, and the best we can get out here is Johnsonville. I'll order up some Usinger's the next time she gets her hankering.

A neoprene wine tote
A bottle of Graham's 10-year tawny port
A bottle of Trellis merlot (CA)
A bottle of the Choco Vine chocolate wine (very good)
A package of Krema Nut Company chocolate covered peanuts

I'm not Jewish--what's a Haukkah gelt?

The item itself is milk chocolate coins, wrapped in gold foil, and usually stamped with the image of some kind of money.

"Gelt" is the Yiddish word for "money". It's called Hanukkah gelt because children can play dreidel with it.

It's not gourmet, it's just something I remember from being a child.

- a "shabu shabu" pot - very specialized

Tell me about that. I adore shabu shabu, both the ritual and the result, but am unaware of what the specialized pot is.

Jenise

Here is a pretty good photo I found

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... N%26um%3D1

Yes I agree it is the longest link ever but let me know if it works.

The "real" shabu shabu pots are these round pounded copper pots with the open tube in the middle to allow for better heat dispersion. They also come with a lid that has a hole cut in the center so they can slide down the tube. You can also make shabu shabu in any kind of "hot pot" - but this is the real deal in Japan. About $350 in Japan.

Bought it in the Kappabashi district which is really cool - a whole neighborhood dedicated to food related stores

http://www.bento.com/phgal-kappabashi.html

Aaah, a Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker, Jenise! Go Bob!

Almost every gift we gave and received was food related, many of them homemade, which was just the best thing ever. We were given a pan de pascua, almond bread, lime pickle, family grown olive oil, medlar jelly, yellow bean and soy dressing, homemade cookies, Tanzanian dark chocolate, achar pickles, and a bottle of citrus (lemon) vodka. If anyone's interested, the photos are all here.

I'd love some advice on what to do with the lemon vodka? Any suggestions?

Best wishes to you all for a wonderful 2010!

Cheers, Celia

[Jenise]

The "real" shabu shabu pots are these round pounded copper pots with the open tube in the middle to allow for better heat dispersion. They also come with a lid that has a hole cut in the center so they can slide down the tube. You can also make shabu shabu in any kind of "hot pot" - but this is the real deal in Japan. About $350 in Japan.

John, thanks, now I understand. I actually do a shabu shabu dinner from time to time, and use an electric wok for that--much as I hate single-use appliances, I actually bought it for that purpose. Haven't done such a dinner in awhile--but say, now that I have a new meat slicer and that part of putting together a shabu shabu isn't a big deal anymore, I should put this on the menu soon!

Celia wrote:
I'd love some advice on what to do with the lemon vodka? Any suggestions?

As fate would have it, not long ago I was looking for frozen dessert ideas and found this on a web site:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/lemo ... -pops.aspx My thoughts were that it might translate into a frozen "loaf" to be served in slices with fresh berries, rather than icecreams on a stick.

My Christmas gift from my son Pete arrived yesterday - a new set of knives.

And a penny?