Dining Features

Software or hardware. Stuff you eat, or kitchen or table stuff. That's the crux of it when you're thinking of foodie gifts. Just remember that at this time of year, fridges are jammed tighter than Celebrities on a Saturday night, so maybe skip the surprise platter of devilled eggs.

Hardware first. My new crush, Yokoyaya123 (the $1, $2, and $3 store in International Village [88 West Pender Street]), sells a small, rectangular frying pan meant for cooking the Japanese rolled omelette called tamagoyaki. The pan isn't very sturdy, but it should last the half-dozen uses a year it gets, and it's a great stocking stuffer.

Close by, the second-floor housewares department at Army & Navy (36 West Cordova Street) has first-rate finds, including a blue china bowl that could hold salad for six or more, or the mother of all Christmas puddings, for just $2.99. The same price also gets you a white oval platter with embossed fruit around its rim that could hold a small turkey. (It's 47 by 35 centimetres, if you want to get technical.) White dinner plates ($1 each) are tailor-made for home-baked cookies. Platters as well as big square or oblong plates are $3.99 each. Chances are they've been snapped up by now, but in my experience you can always snag good deals with nice design at this store.

Lee Valley Tools (1180 Southeast Marine Drive) is a byword for no-nonsense gifts such as the inverted mushroom-shaped pestle that almost fills its marble mortar ($19.50), thereby ensuring that cumin seeds don't go flying when you pound them. Aesthetically speaking, the store's stainless-steel compost pails (a four-litre one for $19.50, a six-litre one for $21) far outswank the plastic kind.

Tools & Techniques (250 16th Street, West Vancouver) can sell you a Kuhn Rikon mandoline ($29.99), Swiss-made of high-grade plastic and complete with the essential knuckle guard. If giftees fancy garlic, parcel up a rotary garlic slicer that makes super-thin slivers ($14.99).

Moving on to gifts of the edible kind, Whole Foods Market (925 Main Street, the Village at Park Royal, West Vancouver) has a real deal on French organic chocolate truffles ($6.99 for 250 grams), packaged under their 365 Organic Everyday Value house brand. Or you could make you own. As you read this, I expect to be up to my armpits in…well, I'm not telling. Let's just say it's sharp and sticky.

Still, I may succumb to far easier options, such as making curry seasoning mix or lemon-rosemary salt found in The Complete Christmas Book, by the editors of Canadian Living (Transcontinental Books, $24.95). It contains recipes and décor projects that are, for the most part, down-to-earth. Candles stood on a bed of cranberries in a wine glass takes seconds. A game plan for Christmas dinner for 12 or simply constructed phyllo cups for cocktail shindigs? It's all here.

If you love somebody a lot, drop in at Edible British Columbia (Granville Island Public Market) and pick up some Venturi Schulze balsamic vinegar from the Cowichan Valley, in a bottle hand-painted with wildflowers ($86 for 250 millilitres). For Whistler-going types, Thomas Haas's Aztec Hot Chocolate Mix is fiery ambrosia ($19.95 for 350 grams). Make it with whole milk, not the thin skim kind, and have it with a loaf of Haas's traditional stollen ($18.95). If you didn't catch a screening of Tableland, the new movie about sustainable food production, Edible B.C. stocks DVDs ($20) signed by filmmaker Craig Noble.

Caren McSherry, founder of the Gourmet Warehouse (1340 East Hastings Street), is nuts about Dominique and Cindy Duby's chocolate bars. Her fave is the caramel anise almond and black pepper one ($5.75 for a 65-gram bar). McSherry also suggests giving the hottest spice around (in terms of trendiness, not heat), the Espelette pepper ($9.69 for 25 grams), which is essential to Basque cookery; Scottish Oaties from the Shortbread House of Edinburgh ($3.99 for 150 grams); and the edible joke of the season, a giant dill pickle in a can called Get One! ($4.99), known in its German homeland as der grosse Gurke. Well, there's Jurgen Gothe ticked off my list.

Over in Kits, Nancy Foulger, owner and pastry chef at Saffron Fourth Avenue (2836 West 4th Avenue) has put up jars of mango chutney, cashmere chutney (so-called because it's so smooth), and ginger jam ($8 for 265 millilitres), as well as five-pepper jelly ($7 for 190 millilitres) made with chili, cayenne, and red and green jalapeños. "A lot of people default to it [the jelly] as an appy," she says, "but it's good as a glaze" for pork, duck, or chicken.

Finally, if you're seeking a gift for the table, it's hard to beat Foulger's poached ginger-pear galette topped with dollops of Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts ($35, feeds 10). Just call ahead to check that there's room in the fridge.