(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking
at Creators Syndicate
Purchasing popular holiday culinary gifts in specialty stores or online often ends up not only with exotic fare, but exotic prices. Crafting homemade delicacies not only can drop the price tag significantly, but also ensures custom presents straight from the heart. When you strategize,
as guided below
, often even such thoughtful and mouthwatering items - like gourmet hot chocolate mixes, an expert pie-making set or one-of-a-kind fruity centerpieces that Spaniards swear promise a New Year of good luck - can be put together quicker than it would require you to sort between choices at the store in the seasonal rush.
They take just
10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare
. The presents are delicious proof that everyone has time for tasty home food preparation and, more importantly, the healthy family time in the kitchen that goes along with it! Another benefit:
There are no right or incorrect amounts.
These are virtually-can't-go-wrong combinations, so whatever you - or your kidlet helpers - choose to use can't help but draw "wows" from the loved ones lucky enough to receive them as gifts.
Tea for Under the Christmas Tree
Take a cue from famous teashops - like Alice's Tea Cup in New York City - and create your own custom
holiday blend
featuring the flavors and scents of the season. Their popular concoction includes Indian black tea, hibiscus, raisins, rose hips, almonds, cinnamon and clove. Wrap tightly and festively and give as is, or perhaps include in a gift basket with inexpensive antique tea cups from eBay or a child's tea set from a 99-cents-type store, as well as a boxed stainless steel tea infuser strainer to prepare the loose tea, currently selling at large chains like Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for just about $2.50.
Olive Oil Worth Ogling
Buy inexpensive glass corked bottles in a crafts store and fill three-quarters with olive oil (doesn't have to be the more expensive extra-virgin type because you'll be increasing its flavor yourself). Make your own decorative and tasty infusion by adding ingredients with impact, such as stems of fresh rosemary or dill, whole red thin chili peppers (wear latex gloves while handling and don't touch your eyes during or afterward), mixture of colored peppercorns, cinnamon sticks or vanilla beans. Accompany the tightly corked gift with homemade compatible sides, such as crackers prepared with fennel seeds and saffron, sun-dried tomato quick bread, or a calligraphy insert you create that guides through olive oil tastings and food pairings.
Create a Pie Pro
Surprisingly, pie pans come in a number of shapes, sizes and materials and are usually extremely inexpensive, especially when bought at supermarkets, discount stores and restaurant supply outlets. Put together a clever mix-and-match gift that will create an instant pie pro of your loved one: 8-, 9- and 10-inch pans, including dark steel, glass, aluminum and stoneware. Make at least one a deep-dish selection, which is from 9 to 11 inches in diameter and 1-1 / 2 to 2 inches deep. Include a general pie cookbook, too, if desired, from a 99-cents-type store.
Loving Latkes for a Happy Hanukkah
Seal up in small Tupperware containers (which also become part of the useful gift) all the ingredients - beyond the oil and shredded plain potato foundations - for innovative Hanukkah latkes (potato pancakes, one of the fried foods that commemorate the miracle of the tiny bit of oil that stayed lit for not one, but eight days, when it was needed). Use shredded zucchini, thinly sliced sweet potatoes, fresh pineapple bits, mixtures of currants and homemade spice blends, like curry, cardamom and ginger. Freeze the fresh ingredients and bring them in a gift-wrapped inexpensive cooler to the latke-making party.
One Meaty Gift
Order an instructive retail cuts of meat poster, often hanging in butcher shops, from an online food or restaurant supply company. Roll it and tie with a ribbon and include in a basket with a gift certificate to a butcher shop, supermarket or steakhouse, as well as jars of hearty meat condiments, such as flavored mustards, barbecue sauces and packaged spice rubs.
Caribbean Calypso Kwanzaa Celebration in a Basket
Copy Better Homes and Gardens magazine's Caribbean Calypso Carnival party theme for Kwanzaa (the African and African-American cultural celebration between the day after Christmas and New Year's, in which the first fruit harvest plays a role and a feast is central to activities) in the form of a lovely gift basket. Fill with exotic tropical fruits, jars of Jamaican jerk seasoning and Scotch bonnet peppers, bottles of hot pepper sauce, tropical punch mix with a wrapped crystal of ginger attached, festive, Caribbean-themed paper or cloth napkins and tablecloth and Calypso music CDs.
Great Grapes for Luck
Look up one of many recipes for sugared green grapes (and keep refrigerated when complete), which make lovely hostess and holiday gifts as decorative centerpieces. Write in your card that this is meant to mark the tradition in Spain that green grapes are thought to bring luck for the New Year. Many Spaniards eat 12 green (non-sugared, fresh) grapes at midnight - at each stroke of the clock - in the hopes of good health during the year. You can include a bottle of sparkling white grape juice - a proven antioxidant - with your present.
Cheery Custom Hot Chocolate
Prepare two or four homemade hot chocolate mixes (a doctoring up of your favorite store-bought products), wrap them tightly in gift cellophane bags tied with ribbon and stuff them into oversized mugs. Consider adding combinations such as these to the inexpensive mixes you've bought: butterscotch chips, dark and white chocolate chips; dried mint, very finely crushed candy canes (like a powder) and very finely crushed vanilla beans (like a powder); orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit zests; jarred Chinese five-spice powder (star anise, fennel, pepper, cinnamon and cloves), curry powder and ground ginger.
Festive Flours
Perfect for your baking chums and an inexpensive way not to break the bank: Give a set of "exotic" flours. Other than all-purpose or whole-wheat, many home cooks never have tried the lighter, nuttier and more textured flavors of the multitude of additional flours available in supermarkets, health food stores and specialty markets. Cake and bread flours are good starts and can be accompanied by choices like stone ground (a more natural, nutritious take on the usual), graham, barley, corn, oat, rice, rye, and - with perhaps a little splurge compared to those - tipo "OO"/Caputo, an imported Italian flour whose full name "farina di grano tenero" literally translates to "flour of soft grain." It creates a noticeably soft dough for what have been called the world's best pizzas and other dishes, like crackers. Available at many Italian markets and usually online at
www.fornobravo.com
.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK:
Like some gourmets have wine cellars, why not have a tea cellar - or at least a tea shelf comparable to your useful spice rack? Here, in tightly closed labeled canisters, you can keep your own custom tea blends. Often much less expensive than purchasing fancy flavored teas, you can specially suit your own tastes with combinations - like the best teashops - including dry ingredients such as, loose teas, spices, dried fruits, slivered nuts, fruit zests and store-bought dried edible flowers.
Lisa Messinger
is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling
The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes
(Avery/Penguin Putnam) and
Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet
(Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission Granted for use on Dr.Laura.com.
