Gift Ideas (or how to treat yourself extremely well)

We Spice Girls can never get enough...of high-quality spices! 

Penzey's (our closest location is 1048 Rockville Pike) is a great site for blends and hard-to-find ingredients like Z'atar, sumac, potent Vietnamese cinnamon for cinnamon rolls, mellow citrusy Ceylon cinnamon for apple pie and Mexican cooking,  Sunny Paris blend--excellent on eggs, quiche and asparagus, chipotle, satay seasoning, and Peri Peri seasoning. Penzey's also sell towels with "Love People. Cook them tasty food." on them!

Speaking of faraway ingredients and spices, the Jerusalem cookbook provides an amazing way to combine and savor foods and flavors we don't always put together. I also enjoyed the intrigue of Hal Vaughn's revisionist biography of Coco Chanel and her "liaisons" with Nazi Germany.

Silicone baking mats are a great time saver for making cookies, macaroons,  meringues, and brittles. I recommend only using them for sweet or neutral scents since they hold on to aromas. This pizza pan is 16 inches in diameter, big enough for take-home Costco pizzas! Other favorites are a pancake pen-shake 'n' shape your pancake batter, a 3-pack of righteous peelers which includes a julienne slicer and an apple slicer to keep the doctor away!

For fellow extreme home economists, consider cheese, vinegar, bread, yogurt, kombucha and mushroom kits to make your own. Williams-Sonoma has some options for almost all of the above. Recommended cookbooks are Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne and Knutzen Erik.

Want a bluetooth speaker and FM transmitter for the car? Sync it with your smartphone and take it to multiple cars, the beach, to an office gathering and picnics. Also useful to transmit music is a cute Panda speaker system.

Looking for something lacy and racy? Sheer lace is one of my favorite ways to amp the vamp. Wear this peplum lace top over a tube top, a simple dress or with a tank top and jeans! Try lace socks for that nice and naughty look when going out, with shorts and lace-up shoes or with a spring dress.

And for gifts that keep on giving, consider public radio and community radio stations, religious organizations, shelters like House of Ruth, job training organizations like DC Central Kitchen, food co-ops, Girl Scouts, and supporting local visual and performing artists.

Season's Greetings!!