13 Gift Ideas For the Foodie in Your Life This Christmas 2017
When in doubt, go with food.
Porcelain berry boxes and cookbooks from Eden In Love make great gifts for food lovers this Christmas.
Photo: Courtesy of Eden in Love
Who doesn’t love food? Here are 13 quick and easy gifts to satisfy even the pickiest foodie on your Christmas list.
1. Fresh Box Meal Kit
Photo: Courtesy of Fresh Box
What’s more appropriate for a foodie than, well, food? Order a Fresh Box, created by chef Will Chen, that includes all the fresh ingredients to make three meals (for two people) with easy-to-follow recipes. This month’s lineup included spicy chicken and mizuna ramen (pictured) and Pacific cod with pecorino-roasted broccoli. You can opt for gluten-free meals, too. Each box costs $72 online delivered to your home on O‘ahu, and Maui and Kaua‘i for additional $8. Dinner is served.
2. Lume Cube Kit and Smartphone Mount
Photo: Courtesy of Lume Cube
Elevate your food-photography game with this portable light that mounts to your smartphone. This is the brightest mobile light on the market—it outputs up to 1,500 lumens of continuous 6,000K light—and it comes with an ultra-comfortable handle and universal phone clip. At full power, the Lume Cube can last up to 20 minutes—or two hours at half power. Cost is around $100 on various sites including B&H and Walmart.
3. Tiny Hearts magnets and pins
Run by a couple who loves food, Tiny Hearts has fed our craving for mini magnets and pins. Many of them feature some of our favorite local snacks and foods, including mochi ice cream, shave ice, lumpia, kālua pig and malassadas. The company also makes stickers, desk calendars and onesies. Find Tiny Hearts at various local shops and on Etsy. A six-pack of magnets costs about $12.
4. Gift Basket from MW
Photo: Courtesy of MW Restaurant
A great gift for co-workers or party hosts, these gift baskets offer an assortment of baked treats and other goodies, curated by MW pastry chef extraordinaire Michelle Karr-Ueoka. The baskets range from the MW Grandma Cookie Box ($20) to the Brandt Steak Dinner Basket ($125), which includes an 18-ounce True Natural Brandt rib-eye steak, Hāmākua enyngi mushrooms, Twin Bridge Farm Waialua-grown asparagus, The Rice Factory Hokkaido white rice, and house-made butter and sauce. We love the Local Farmer Basket ($50, pictured), which comes with a bounty of locally grown veggies and OK Farm eggs.
5. Kō Hana Rum Gift Set
Photo: Courtesy of Kō Hana Hawaiian Agricole rum
Rum aficionados will love this special set featuring three types of Kō Hana Hawaiian Agricole Rum and two Glencairn tasting glasses. Cost is $150. Or spring for Kō Hana club membership, which includes a bottle every season and a reserved private tour and tasting at the Kunia distillery for up to four people. That’s $185 each season.
6. Truffle Lover’s Gift Basket from Island Olive Oil
Photo: Courtesy of Island Olive Oil
You’ve got that one friend who’s obsessed with truffle. This gift basket from Island Olive Oil at Ward Village has everything a truffle lover could want: black and white truffle oils, truffle honey, truffle salt, truffle pasta, truffle cream, truffle polenta and—just for fun—white balsamic truffle pearls. The shop has other gift baskets, too, including the Hawaiian Lover’s packed with locally made products. Baskets range from $45 for a mini basket to $190 for the large truffle-centric one.
7. Honey Bunny Body Butter from Petal to the Mettle
Local artist Laarni Gedo started growing certified organic flowers in Waialua and selling gorgeous bouquets and arrangement at nearby farmers’ markets. Now, she’s using her flowers to infuse oils to create natural skincare products, including the luxurious Honey Bunny body butter made with coconut oil from coconuts growing on her farm and beeswax from Wai‘anae. It’s great as an all-over body moisturizer with a scent of toasted honey macarons. Cost is $12 for a 1-ounce tin, $20 for a 2-ounce tin.
8. MasterClass with Thomas Keller
Photo: Courtesy of MasterClass
Got a friend who wants to be a chef—but can’t quit his day job? Consider signing him up for the online MasterClass with chef Thomas Keller, the only American-born chef to hold multiple Michelin three-star ratings. (Chefs Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck teach online classes on this site, too.) The in-depth course is a series of video lessons, highlighting particular techniques or dishes, with Keller walking you through each preparation. It includes a workbook you can download and recipes. Cost is $90 for unlimited access for a single instructor, $180 per year to access all of the courses, which includes Martin Scorsese on filmmaking and Steph Curry on basketball.
9. America The Great Cookbook
This cookbook (Weldon Owen, $40) answers the question: So, what do chefs cook for the people they love? It features more than 100 celebrity chefs and culinary icons—Carla Hall, David Chang, Michael Voltaggio, Dan Barber—who share their heartwarming stories about food, family and life. Hawai‘i’s Ed Kenney is included in this cookbook, curated by James Beard Award-winning food and dining editor of The Washington Post Joe Yonan. Kenney’s dish? A cast iron-roasted fish and veggies with limu salsa verde. Buy it here.
10. Gift Baskets from Rainbow Drive-In
Photo: Catherine Toth Fox
The iconic drive-in on Kapahulu Avenue is selling gift baskets starting from $10 with some of its most popular items including logo mugs, buttermilk pancake mixes, rice paddles, local honey and chili mixes. Or you can stop by the Rainbow Tiki store for logo T-shirts, hats and tote bags.
11. Gingerbread House Kit from The Royal Hawaiian
Photo: Courtesy of The Royal Hawaiian
If the foodie on your list also happens to be a parent, consider this gingerbread house kit from the bakery at The Royal Hawaiian. For $30, this kit comes with everything you need to construct a gingerbread house. While you’re there, you may as well grab one of the freshly baked desserts by executive pastry chef Carolyn Portuondo. We suggest the hotel’s famous banana bread, Big Island honey macadamia nut sticky buns, cinnamon kouign amann, the signature pink snowballs or one of the seasonal frosted holiday cookies. With a $20 purchase, get free parking at the Sheraton Hotel garage for four hours.
12. Cute Kitchen Things from Eden In Love
Photo: Courtesy of Eden In Love
You might be surprised at what you can find in Eden In Love’s South Shore Market and Waikīkī boutiques. Both stores sell way more than maxi dresses and obi belts. You can find a lot of cute kitchen accessories and cookbooks—like these porcelain berry containers and The Kitchn Cookbook: Recipes, Kitchens & Tips to Inspire Your Cooking—here. We love the wide selection of adorable tote bags, Papa Nessie pasta spoons, bag clips in the shape of stroopwafel, coffee mugs with inspirational messages, canvas wine bags and cork coasters.
13. Plant a Tree with the Mālama Learning Center
Photo: Courtesy of the Mālama Learning Center
Support the restoration of native Hawaiian trees and shrubs in the Wai‘anae Mountains by donating to the Mālama Learning Center’s Me + Tree campaign this Christmas. The program is part of the new Ola Nā Kini initiative, which aims at reviving this area devastated and overrun with invasive plants. This year, volunteers have started seeding, planting and nurturing native trees, shrubs and ground cover—hao, ‘iliahi a loe, lonomea, wiliwili—that once thrives in these mountains. Make a tax-deductible donation of at least $50 to support this program.
Sometimes giving is way better than receiving.
READ MORE STORIES BY CATHERINE TOTH FOX
