Here’s another of our holiday recipe strategies: black olives that we’ve doctored up with fragrant homemade rosemary oil. We serve them as an instant hors d’oeuvre with chilled wine or cocktails AND pack them into glass jars to give as gifts. The method is simple.
Read Moreglass jars for homemade food gifts
Where do you get the jars to pack your juice homemade food gifts in? We have three strategies: collect them over the year (soak the labels off nice-looking jars some other food has come in), buy vintage jars at flea markets and thrift stores OR buy them. Here’s our compendium of great looking affordable jars.
Read MoreDIY Gifts: Dried Fruit in Fragrant Syrup (Boozy or Not)
Every year, I make big batches of Prunes in Armagnac, Cherries in Red Wine Syrup and Apricot in Cardamom Syrup to give as gifts, packed into pretty jars, with handwritten tags listing their possibilities. I also rely on them for my own entertaining, to serve as fab instant desserts. They are all made by the same basic approach. Here it is, with some recipes to illustrate.
Read MorePaper Packaging for Homemade Holiday Gifts
We hadn’t thought much about packaging suggestions for homemade food gifts until our friend David Saltman was casting about for bags to pack his home-roasted coffee beans in. We had a dwindling stash of white metal tie coffee bags we’d bought years ago by begging the coffee guy at our local gourmet store to sell…
Read MoreSally’s Holiday Gift Ideas on The Splendid Table
Sally shares her favorite holiday gifts on public radio’s great The Splendid Table. All are charming, unexpected and inexpensive, and many can be homemade or bought. They will be appreciated by a wide range of folks whether they’re serious cooks or not. A sheaf of poems is just one.
Read Morediy food gift: dried cherries in red wine or grappa syrup
Interior designer Suzanne Shaker recently sent this email: Sally, I’m craving your cherries in grappa. Would you please post the recipe again, as it is that time of year ..our last year’s supply is just about finished. I’m making them for gifts as you always do. A gift that lasts and brings such joy to…
Read Moregarden of delights: béquet montana caramels
A while after we posted about Laura Handler’s lovely Montana cabin, and after many emails back and forth in which we discovered we lived in the same neighborhood in New York, and many other affinities, we received a package in the mail. With it came a note: “Just another worlds-colliding-thing from here that I hope…
Read Morejust in time for the holidays: canal house cooking vol. 7
We’ve loved Canal House Cooking since it launched in 2009. Created and self-published by two home chefs, each book in this cookbook series is made with care, beautifully presented with unique (and do-able) recipes. We treasure our copies, but we also like to give subscriptions as gifts–new books are released three times a year, but…
Read Moregreen chickpeas (produce as house gift) + recipe
One of my favorite house gifts (to give or to get) is an of-the-season treasure from a good local market, like perfect cherries in early summer, or a bunches of lemon verbena for tea in August, or Meyer Lemons in late winter… These gifts require an eye on the market and a bit of luck,…
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