Last-Minute Gifts: The Five Best Presents For Foodies

Remember fruitcake? Fruitcake used to be the punch line to a thousand daytime talk show jokes about unwanted gifts. Old people gave you fruitcakes; fruitcakes were bad; nobody ever ate fruitcakes. And you know what? They weren't wrong. Fruitcake really is horrible. But how does that one stigmatized product equip us to shop for the nation's ever-growing foodie sector? Worse, what well-intentioned gift will become tomorrow's punch line? I've thought about this a lot, having both given and received a lot of good and bad food presents over the last few years. So here, for your last-minute use, are what I consider some of the best foodie Christmas presents on the market.

First, though, a word about bad foodie presents. Elaborate specialty equipment is a killer, whether it's a fondue pot, as in days of old, or its modern equivalent, a raclette grill. Things that take up a bunch of space and are seldom if ever used aren't presents; they're burdens. You might as well give somebody a second mortgage. Weird condiments like truffle oils will generally gather dust. And big cookbooks? Guilt machines. They sit there and reproach you for not cooking from them. (See TIME's 2010 Holiday Shopping Guide.)