christmas gift
Forkful #3: A Few Gourmet Ingredients
Christmas is just a few days away, and you’re still need in need of an idea – but you don’t want to get a gift card. Well this idea just involves a trip to your local grocery store (or gourmet store if you have one). Pick up a selection of high-end ingredients for your foodie. [...]
Forkful #4: Chocolate-Covered Orange Peels
We’re getting pretty close to the wire now, so you need an idea you can execute pretty easily, ideally without a trip to the mall. A delicious option is making chocolate-covered orange peels. I’ve made these myself more than once (though I seem to be incapable of correctly tempering the chocolate….) and they are delicious. [...]
Forkful #6: A Farmer in a Basket
A great gift idea for the foodie on your list who wants to enjoy fresh, local eats is a CSA share. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and you’re basically buying a share in a local farm’s product. You pay the farmer upfront for a basket of their items, delivered weekly to a pre-specified location. [...]
Forkful #9: A Whole Deck of Deals
You may recall the post we did a month or so ago about the release of the 2010 A La Card deck. It’s a deck of 52 cards that you buy for $30, with each card getting you $10 off one of 52 Chicago restaurants. We think it’s pretty cool, and recommend it to anyone [...]
Forkful #10: A Carton for your Cream
If you, or the foodie on your list, enjoys making homemade ice cream (as we do – so delicious…) then you could use a slightly more glamorous container for it than your random wannabe-Tupperware. A great option is the 1 quart carton by Sweet Bliss containers. We got a sleeve of these for Byron’s birthday [...]
Forkful #11: Sharpen Up!
We all intend to sharpen our kitchen knives with some regularity. Really. But it’s been two years since we got our fantastic Global knives as a wedding present, and they’ve never been resharpened. Which really isn’t that long – but with two people who love to cook using them every day, they could use a [...]
Forkful #12: A Great Read
Chances are, you’ve heard of Michael Pollan. He’s a food writer, but not in the restaurant-review or recipe sense. He loves to explore the cultural-industrial-anthropological side of what we eat. His book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is one of my absolute favorite books. In it, he digs into the supply chain journey of the foods we [...]
Forkful #13: Foodzie Lovin’
If you live in a big city, you can probably scope out some great artisanal food finds for your foodie without too much trouble. There are probably a few decent gourmet food shops around, and Whole Foods always has interesting finds. But what if you don’t live near any of that? Then Foodzie.com is the [...]
Forkful #14: Exotic Salts – Ghost Pepper Salt Anyone?
As we’ve mentioned before, South Bend has a great year-round farmer’s market. One of the booths there is for a fantastic little gourmet seasonings company, s.a.l.t sisters. We got to chat with Charmane Skillen, the company’s creator, when we were there last week. She’s got a great selection of high-end gourmet salts (ie. fleur de [...]
Forkful #15: The Ever-Fabulous Microplane
Today’s holiday gift idea is a staple of any well stocked kitchen: the Microplane grater/zester. Before we owned one, I never knew what we were missing, but now I couldn’t imagine not having it. It makes freshly-grating your nutmeg a snap, and makes it easy to grate just a touch of Parmesan to top your [...]
