When you’re into food Christmas and birthdays become somewhat predictable as your friends and loved ones immediately have a massive pool of easy gift ideas, and in general this is works out great for me. At the very least I’m guaranteed at one cookery book on every gift giving occasion, which I love because as well as actually cooking the new recipes I can happily spend many hours just browsing through cookery books. I’ve been given a few lovely homemade hampers (including a particularly impressive Italian spectacular featuring piccante and dolce provolone, scamorza and no less than 6 different Italian meats), and one birthday some friends even gave me a live lobster (dear Pinchey, he was very tasty).
This post and gallery on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog did make me chuckle though, because I’ve also had my share of flavoured salt and ramen noodle kits. Even the people who should know you well can stumble when trying to pick a foodie present if they have no real interest in food themselves – last year my boyfriend, who is usually excellent, gave me an absurdly massive spice rack that needed space to stand on its own and burled around to help you find the very spice you’re looking for. There was literally no surface space in the kitchen that would accommodate it, and although it had 18 different spices it still didn’t have all the ones I use so the spice shelf in the cupboard couldn’t be retired.
Although in fairness, my foodie tendencies have been known to cause problems in my own gift buying. I assume (quite naturally I think) that everyone likes food as much as I do. Who wouldn’t enjoy a scotch egg gift box? Or a duck and venison pie? Astonishingly though I’ve learned that some people have a strange ‘food as fuel’ attitude and will not thank you for a lovely box of meat.
Have any other foodies out there received an unusually rubbish present? Or given one that was not well received?
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