2018 Holiday Guide: Gifts for Sausage Making at Home

My wife and I have somehow found ourselves with a bit of time off this holiday season and have decided this is the year to indulge in our strange, shared desire to make sausage. Don’t laugh; I’ve wanted to craft tube meat since I attended the NVICA event back in April and Crystal’s been saying we pay too much for prefabs forever.

So we pooled our meager pre-Christmas funds and went in on a sausage stuffer, not knowing that it takes a wee bit more gear to actually get stuffing. A quick peek through all the charcuterie books on my shelf and a couple eleventh hour Amazon orders later we now have a complete kit for sausage making ready for a holiday sausage party. Read More

2017 Holiday Gift Guide: What To Get A Young Prep Cook?

Continuing our recent trend of posts about mentoring all the fresh new faces joining our industry, I whipped up a Holiday gift guide for this year focused on all the stuff that a brand new cook would need to get started in a kitchen. We’re talking about someone green, first day of culinary school green. Finally made it out of the dishpit and is about to chop their first onion green. Read More

2016 Gift Guide : Bistro Cookbooks

27_septime3_11172The weirdest year most of us can remember has almost lurched across the finish line, but before we can all raise a glass to 2017 there’s still the matter of Christmas. I ‘dunno about ya’ll but this year we plan to keep our holiday festivities as low key as possible and focus on family, with moments set aside here and there to escape to the blanket fort with a good book.

The last couple of years I’ve suggested all manner of gadgets and do-dads for the kitchen, but this Christmas I’d like to go oldschool and point out a couple great cookbooks that I’ve collected over the years that have inspired me. Some of them were given to me as gifts and many I have gifted to others with similar results so they are 100% vetted for giftabillity! Read More

2014 Holiday Guide : Ten Gifts For Pro Cooks and Chefs

2014 Holiday Guide - Pro CooksHoliday shopping sucks.

It should be fun and joyful, but most of it is a florescent-lit hell of shopping cart lines, tinny Sinatra music and a dull nagging doubt that you (yes you) could have done better… Could have found that perfect gift for the one you love! Instead every year is a bit of a compromise, a sell out. And every year another promise to get it right… Next year.

No longer! “Next year” is this year, and your good buddy The Internet is here to save you from another long, soul destroying slog through Wal Mart. This year you can point and click your way to the perfect gift for everyone on your list, including your buddies in the culinary industry!

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