Gift Guide: You Can't Eat This

Gift shopping? The next few posts will be all about fun items for gifts for friends, family, and even for you. I've tried to include items for every price range, from stocking stuffers to stand-alone gifts, but most of these are very affordable.

Sure, some are splurges, but it's the holidays, right? Links will take you to Amazon or other places where you can check prices and buy.

Have fun shopping!

Tapas Plate

How about something hand crafted? This tapas plate is hand-made in Indonesia, so each one will be slightly different. Not into tapas? It would be great for small snacks, nuts, or even serving sauces or dips. This is a great gift for folks who prefer a hand-crafted item.

Reidel Glasses

These are definitely high-end glasses, so save them for folks who are serious about their wine or cocktails. There are wine glasses specifically made for different varieties of wines - no just generic red or white, plus glasses for whiskeys and cocktails. Choose the right one for the right person for the right drink and it's sure to be a hit.

Anything from Dreamfarm

Dreamfarm has a wide variety of innovative tools, from their garlic press to their tongs to their spoons. I'd hate to call out just one of them, but if I had to, I think it would be the tongs because I like the way they stand on a countertop, so you're not leaving the business end on the counter. Plus, they all have really cute names. I suggest you just wander through their website or Amazon and pick a few for stocking stuffers.

Maverick Bluetooth BBQ Thermometer

All our tools are getting smarter, and that includes thermometers. The Maverick thermometer uses bluetooth to send information to the app on your phone or tablet, so you don't need to hover over the stove or the barbecue to check the temperature of the roast. This one has the ability to have multiple probes working at once, so you can watch the beef roast and the pork roast from a single device.

Trudeau Silicone Chocolate Molds and Bakeware

I'll admit it. Early silicone bakeware sounded like a great idea, but it just didn't work as promised. Cakes and cupcakes would stick and pans would sag. Now, those problems have been addressed and silicone bakeware is actually living up to its early promise. Trudeau makes a huge variety of bakeware shapes as well as chocolate molds ... that you could also use for tiny baked goods, if you're like me.

Art + Cook Super Slicer

This is sort of a manual version of a food processor, with a variety of cutting surfaces for slicing and shredding. Then, attach the egg beater for mixing and whisking or the chopping blade for ... well, chopping. No, this won't replace your high-powered machine, but it's a single device with a lot of uses - great for someone who doesn't want a heavy machine.

GIR Ladle

GIR constantly makes innovative changes to common products and one of the latest is this ladle. It's a little soft and squishy around the edges, so you can really get into corners and grab the last bits of whatever remains in a pot. It just finished its run on Kickstarter, but if you don't want to wait, you can check out many of the other innovative GIR items.

Ringer cast iron scrubber

How do you clean your cast iron pans? The Ringer Cast Iron Scrubber was made specifically for this task. It's made from stainless steel, so it won't rust, and it's sturdy enough to scrape off any burned-on bits that might be stuck to the pan. No soap needed. Although I haven't tried it, this might be useful for other surfaces as well.

Zoku Cool Moji Ice Tray

Put some tech fun into your drinks with this cute ice mold. The ice is a decent size for cocktails and each one has a different emoji face to give the drinks personality. These were easy to unmold and the impressions were easy to see, but I found that once they went into drinks, they were less obvious. I'd suggest letting people pick their own ice emoji, or perhaps make the ice with a mix of two different colored liquids, with a thin layer at the bottom, let that freeze, then fill with a second liquid. That way, the impressions would be more visible, even when the ice is in the glass. This is not the fault of the product, by the way, just the way ice looks when you toss them in liquid.

Crisp Melon Baller Set

Maybe you don't make melon balls often, but a melon baller comes in handy for so many other things, like removing the cores from apples or removing the hull from strawberries or tomatoes. This set includes two sizes of melon ballers, and one with teeth that's designed to be a huller. This is a great stocking stuffer!

These products were provided at no cost to me for the purpose of review.

ThermoPop (and a Giveaway!)

I've been playing around with a new toy in the kitchen: the ThermoPop made by Thermoworks, the some folks who make the Thermapen.

The ThermoPop is like the little sister to the Thermapen (okay, it could be the little brother, too, but mine is pink).

It reads the correct temperature in 3 to 4 seconds, it's splashproof, and the display rotates so you don't have to turn your head upside down to read the it.

The rotation isn't automatic - there's a button you press to change the display orientation, so it will face whatever direction you want it to.

It reads from -58F to 572F, which is a much wider range than I can imagine needing in the kitchen, particularly on the low end. But ... having such a wide range means it's going to be pretty accurate in the range I do use.

Oh, and the display is backlit, so it's easy to read. And you can choose to read the temperature in Fahrenheit or centigrade, there are nine different colors to choose from, and there's a sheath that the probe slides into, so you won't be stabbing yourself when you reach for it in the kitchen drawer. There's a clip on the sheath so you can clip the thermometer to your apron.

It's also kind of fun to say ... "Hey, could you grab the ThermoPop for me?"

Oh, and it comes in a nice box, so it's easy to wrap!

What's not to love? It does everything a normal cook needs, and it doesn't break the budget.

But you might not need to buy one. Here's a super-quick giveaway. US residents only.

Thanks to Thermoworks for providing a thermometer for me, and at least one for a giveaway (I might be giving away a second one later. Stay tuned!)

Sunbeam Massaging Heat Therapy Wrap

Okay, I don't normally write about non-food-related items, but:

1) It's getting close to Christmas.

2) I really like this thing and want to tell you about it.

3) Someone brilliant once told me that since this is my blog, I could write about unicorns if I wanted to.

4) It's marginally food related.

The marginally-food-related part has to do with the fact that I spend a lot of time pecking away at my laptop, writing, researching, and yes, goofing off. Sometimes my back and shoulder muscles protest.

But really, my love for this thing is also partially because I'm kind of weird. In winter, I'd prefer to be in a slightly cool room and snuggle under a blanket. Or have a shoulder warmer or heating pad keeping my cozy. This is particularly nice when I'm reading or watching TV.

Summer, I don't want to be cold in my house, but in winter, I like the little bit of chill so I can wear fluffy sweaters, fuzzy socks, and get snuggled. I guess I like to nest. Yes, I'm weird. I admit it.

I had a shoulder-warmer that I liked, but it suffered a casualty due to a power glitch. Or at least I think that's what happened. I had a couple of electric devices that I had to restart, and the warmer was cold. Bummer.

So I went shopping. I considered a small blanket. Then I found this crazy shoulder wrap thing with a massage setting. The Sunbeam Massaging Heat Therapy Wrap. And it was only a tiny bit more expensive than the one without the massage feature. All righty then.

As soon as it arrived, I turned it on and sat back and ... aaaaahhhhhh. I might have lost an hour there, enjoying the massage. It's not like one of the gizmos with balls that get deep and pushy. This is more like a buzzing thing. More like what a shower-head massage feels like, but not wet, obviously.

It has high and low settings for heat, and then the massage is high or low, and constant or intermittent. So far, I like the low intermittent for the massage. I like the low heat when I just want to be a little warm, and the high when I've got an annoyed muscle.

Today, I woke up with a muscle that told me that I had apparently slept in an odd position. I fired up the massager, positioned the buzzy part over the muscle, and leaned back while I checked emails. By the time the emails were taken care of, the muscle had stopped yelling at me. I'm not going to say that it was entirely fine, but I could move like a normal person again.

I've gone through a number of shoulder heating pads, and the one annoyance I have with them is that they seem to have a very sensitive fuse or something. You're not supposed to use them with a power strip or UPS, but on the other hand, a little power glitch fried my last one. Unfortunately, the place where I use this thing most often is not convenient for me to plug and unplug. And now that winter is here, I use it pretty much every night. So ... it gets left plugged in.

I'm hoping this one will be a little more robust than the last few I owned - or maybe I'll find a more convenient place to plug it in. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the massage.

Who's it for: Weird people like me.

Pros: Warm. Massage. Ahhhh.

Cons: Pricey compared to basic heating pads.

Wishes: I hope to heck it lasts a long time.

Source: I bought it from Amazon.