There's only a week left until Christmas, and perhaps you just realized that you left a favorite cook off your shopping list. Or perhaps you haven't found just the right thing for a fellow baker or food-lover, and you're wondering what to give them now. Well, here are seven items that we'd love to receive; perhaps one of them would be welcome? And all of them are truly last-minute — buy them now, and gift them tonight.
• 1. Canal House Cooking subscription, $49.95 for 3 issues. These gorgeous books have the seasonality of a great food magazine, but the beauty and production value of a well-edited cookbook. We really can't express how much we love this series (although not for lack of trying). A subscription is not cheap, but it's worth it.
• 2. Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything iPhone app, $4.99. Do you have a friend who cooks constantly? Does he love his iPhone? Well, how about a cookbook for the phone. This is a well-designed, practical, and useful app that includes many recipes from Bittman's classic book.
• 3. Eat Your Books, $25 for a yearly membership. Ever wished you could search inside your cookbooks? Wish that you could look up the ingredients in a favorite recipe while you're at the office? Eat Your Books is an index for your cookbooks. It's a wonderful, growing service, and if your friend already has all the cookbooks she could ever need, then perhaps this is the gift to get. (See our review here.)
• 4. Cook's Illustrated Online Membership, $34.95 for one year. This is a fabulous gift: Access all of Cook's Illustrated's recipes, tool reviews, and tips online for a whole year.
• 5. Gift Certificate to Market Hall Foods (or any other online gourmet food retailer), $ varies. This is such a great gift because half the fun of food shopping is picking out the food yourself. What if your friend craves one whole truffle? Great olive oil? Fancy sugars or salts? Let her go to town with a bit of a gift certificate to a gourmet retailer.
• 6. Printable Recipe Cards, $6 at Twisted Fibre. These cards are instantly downloadable and printable. You can buy them and give them as they are, or paste in some of your own favorite recipes before printing. (You can search Etsy for even more options, too.)
• 7. Rouxbe Online Cooking Classes, $29.95 for one month. This is a bit of a gamble; we haven't seen any of these videos, but we're curious about them. (Have you checked out Rouxbe's online cooking school?) For a brand new cook, these videos might be a great gift. Or, alternatively, what about assembling an online list of the best YouTube cooking videos? (Free! Just takes a little time.)
Check out some more ideas for last-minute gifts below.
Related: Gift Guide: Best Last Minute Online Gifts for Cooks
Do you have any last-minute gifts that you'd love to give or receive?
(Images: via EatBoutique; via MobileRead; Eat Your Books; Cook's Illustrated; Market Hall Foods; Twisted Fibre)
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The Cooks Illustrated online subscription would be nice - but I would advise anyone who wants to purchase one of their cookbooks, to NOT do it through their site. Buy them in-store or on Amazon.
When you purchase them through the CI website, you automatically agree (in the small print) to "purchase" other cookbooks in the future. So a few months after your original purchase you'll get another book in the mail with a BILL. Not amusing...
Rouxbe is a phenomenal cooking instruction series. I can heartily recommend it to anyone looking to improve/learn about classic techniques without wanting to spend the money on culinary school. My boyfriend took the egg-cooking series and makes the most uncannily delicious omelets and mayonnaise now.
Rouxbe is great! I was a member for a little while until finances demanded I quit. But I would definitely sign up again. The videos are very professional and educational, really very much like learning from a pro. I learned a lot even about things I thought I knew, like knife skills. Definitely a great gift for someone who wants to take their cooking to the next level.
A bookful of IOU's for doing the dishes.
Morganong,
I had the same experience. I've been battling them for years. They send me things I didn't order without a return label. So far I've thanked them for the gift and reported them to the USPS and fair debt collection agencies. I get bills all the time that look like they're from a collection agency but turns out they're from Cooks Illustrated "Internal Collection's Department."
It's so sad because I really liked their publications but I'll never buy anything from them again.
I had the same experience with Cook's a long time ago. It took quite some doing to extract myself from their automatic-shipping clutches. Sad to hear they're still up to their old tricks.
Clean it up Cook's!!
Rouxbe is amazing. My sister bought me a 3-month subscription for my birthday and I'm secretly hoping someone will renew it for me for Christmas. They break down the steps so well, and include all basics - stocks, sauces, various cooking methods, etc. I'm an experienced cook but I still learned and refined lots based on Rouxbe. I highly recommend it!