Gifts of Food

I find it difficult to choose what to give during the holidays. For a number of years, my sweetie and I opted out of gift-giving, choosing instead to make a financial donation to a non-profit in honor of friends and family. We alternated between national and local organizations each year.

We still eschew the commercialism of the season but we now give homemade gifts to a few people. Food is a good choice, in my opinion, because everyone eats. Gifts of food do not add to the clutter on a shelf, get shoved in a closet never to be worn, or tend to be re-gifted as soon as possible. That is, of course, assuming one takes care to match the food to the person's preferences. Giving homemade liqueur to a recovering alcoholic, for example, would not be appropriate.

Waiting for a particular date on the calendar to give a gift has never made sense to me so I started my seasonal giving over a month ago. With all of the delicious homemade vinegar resulting from my summer experiments, I had more than enough to share with my friends at the CSA, many of whom are as passionate about preserving food as I am.


Over the summer, I scoured the thrift stores for pretty little containers. I visited the local brewing store for corks to fit. I filled most of these with Asian pear vinegar and one with prickly pear vinegar for the gal who is really into harvesting wild foods. Everyone seemed happy with their gifts and several have told me they've almost used up all their vinegar already.


For a dear friend that frequently entertains, I shared some of my prickly pear liqueur. I'll also be giving a bottle to my mother-in-law to share with her Bunco group. I'm sure you won't be surprised to read that the bottles for these gifts also came from thrift stores. The staff at the brewing store must think I'm a bit strange since I'm always buying corks but no bottles or brewing supplies.


It is very difficult to shop for my mother-in-law. We have encouraged her over the years to let go of her clutter. Initially it was challenging for her emotionally but she discovered that keeping only what she really liked and used was more satisfying than simply being surrounded by less meaningful but familiar things. As a result of our success, we shy away from buying her anything new for her home and this is especially true now that she has moved into a smaller place.

Despite our encouragement over the years, she still does not take care of herself as well as we would wish. When she comes to stay with us, she always leaves feeling better physically due to eating much healthier meals. She loves my cooking but is not willing to cook this way for herself, even though I put together a big notebook of easy recipes for her years ago.


I decided to put together some almost-instant meals for her. (Click to enlarge the photo.) Remember the backpacking kits of dehydrated food I ordered last year? Each kit contains an assortment of dried vegetables and legumes. I also ordered some TVP-based fake chicken chunks. This week, I picked up a box of instant brown rice from the grocery store and some plastic food storage containers. Yes, I know that it is not good to buy new plastic but this will ultimately reduce her overall use of plastic as she currently uses plastic wrap to cover leftovers on a plate or bowl. With re-usable containers, she will quit throwing away plastic all the time.

I put together three soup mixes: potatoes & cabbage, lentil stew, and Mexican beans & rice. I added appropriate vegetables to each and seasonings from my spice cabinet. I included directions on how to prepare these. It's quite simple: add as much as desired to three times as much boiling water. Simmer for 10 minutes. Eat.

The last mix was for chicken pot pie using the vegetarian "chicken" chunks. What else do you need for pot pie? Biscuits. I filled a larger container with homemade biscuit mix that she can whip up to bake on top of the pot pie or separately.

I recalled how much she likes my homemade hummus so I filled the last small container with the dehydrated hummus I had left from our ill-fated trip to Missouri.

To go with the hummus she'll need bread. Got that covered thanks to some Amish Friendship Bread Starter given to my sweetie by a coworker. I made and froze some bread dough for my mother-in-law to simply defrost, let rise, and bake. The starter has led me on quite an adventure which I will share with you in another post. It also provided gifts (starter) for three more friends.


I hope that everyone who receives food from my kitchen enjoys it. I've been lucky enough to receive some food from others this year as well: bok choy from a garden, local pecans, homemade prickly pear Turkish Delight, homemade raspberry jam, peanuts (local from Texas), and local wine (also from Texas). I've been munching on a number of these gifts already. Rumor is there are some sugar cookies coming on Christmas Eve. It just doesn't get any better than this. Happy Holidays and Happy Eating!