Food-related Gifts

The best type of gift for a food-loving person is always a food-related gift. You may be surprised to discover the wooing power of a humble apron, a beautiful cut of meat, some cute-as cupcake cases, or titanium-strength gelatine leaves. It doesn’t have to be an expensive meal out or some fancy cookbook – oh no, we food-interested can be surprisingly easy to please.

So after receiving some wonderful food-related gifts for Christmas, imagine my delight when Weirdo and Ms Sourdough returned from New York not only married (Congratulations again, guys!) but also armed with some wonderful foodie things for me!

And from where else did these gifts hail but the gourmet haven of Dean & Deluca which I fell in love with years ago, admittedly long before I started cooking regularly – I fell in love with it, rather, through watching Felicity (cue: much embarrassed blushing!). This however does not detract from the thoughtfulness of the selection of gifts which included a Dean & Deluca cookbook (with bonus wooden spoon) and a tin of nigella seeds.

The cookbook has chapters organised by main ingredient as well as by meal course, but the part I love most is that there is a conversion page for imperial to metric measurements at the back. And the appeal of the nigella seeds, apart from being packaged in an attractive Dean & Deluca tin, hails back to my first ever Nigella Lawson cookbook where she writes about picking up a tin of these seeds herself whilst visiting Dean & Deluca in New York. I would have too if there was a foodstuff that I shared my name with!

To top it off, Weirdo and Ms Sourdough also brought me back a community food magazine which I am most enjoying reading whilst on the short lunchbreaks at my new job. It’s so interesting reading magazines not from your local area as I find I’ve actually been scanning the advertisement pages as well.

But all this was trumped by Monsieur Poisson receiving a Nespresso machine with a range of starter coffee capsules from Nella. My husband was so unbelievably chuffed as he’s been wanting one of these for quite some time. The sleek body and system design is easy to clean but we have yet to find a proper living space for it in our kitchen with limited bench space.

It really is quite a beautiful thing to look at, especially with its multicoloured capsules. The very generous gift contained a milk-frothing jug which has got my mind to thinking about what other uses I could have for a frother apart from milk for sweet beverages…

The unit doesn’t make the array of professional noises usually heard from an espresso machine but it does emit some reassuring whirring and clicking. Most importantly it does produce a decent cup of coffee, something which Monsieur Poisson has a hard time finding in the immediate area where we live.

So a big thank you once again for these gifts. They are gifts that will keep giving in various and differed ways, but what’s evident is the consideration and thought bestowed upon us.

(And if anyone has suggestions/recipes for the nigella seeds then please send them my way!)

happy cooking& happy eating!