Holiday Shopping 2007

Frightened away by the hordes, I have resorted to online shopping this year. And as you can probably imagine, most of the gifts are food-related!

To start, I sent my mother a gingerbread house from Cookie Outlet, which offers small, medium, large, and even blue-iced Chanukah versions. (Cookie Outlet also sends Junior's cheesecakes to nostalgic ex-New Yorkers around the country.)

Then, I looked at the Meduri World Delights Website. This Oregon-based company specializes in dried fruits which have been prepared in such a way as to maintain most of their moisture. But the prospect of dried fruit wasn't quite decadent enough, so I ordered a box of chocolate-and-fruit truffle delights for my companion. (OK, I'll make an admission. I have an awful habit of deciding that we'll open just one present prematurely. And this year, it happened to be this box of chocolate-and-fruit truffles. So I can tell you that the white chocolate strawberry tastes just like strawberry shortcake.) If you want to support a local fruit vendor instead, you can visit Manhattan Fruitier, which also sells some adorable chocolate penguins.

I've been extolling the virtues of my Nespresso Aeroccino to anyone who will listen, so this item went on my gift list too. Basically, I'm one of those people who can't make decent cappuccino foam, no matter how hard I try. I've done everything they've told me; I've held the nozzle in the bottom of the cup, the top of the cup, I've chilled the milk, I've used skim milk, and still, my foam is the consistency of, well, hot milk. Enter this amazing, foolproof machine: one simple touch of a button and my foam was the envy of any barista!

Naturally, this handy item is selling out (Nespresso is back-ordered till late December) but as of this writing, er, typing, it's still available at Williams-Sonoma. And if you're looking for coffee to enclose with this gift, I'm excited to inform you that you can now order Spanish sugar-roasted Torrefacto coffee at Tienda.com. (After my last visit to Spain, which was eons ago, I craved this coffee and could find it nowhere online.)

Right now, I'm not dreaming of a white Christmas, but rather a cup of Torrefacto coffee topped with perfect Aeroccino-ed foam, accompanied by a hefty helping of the peach cobbler in Alice Waters' The Art Of Simple Food, which also makes an excellent gift.