November 29, 2024 – Let’s just assume you and your loved ones have been less naughty of late.
So we can justify a triple blessing of epicurean gift strategies.
These flavor favors fall into categories of gourmet cheese, craft beer and quirky cookbooks, all giftable and appearing here in full Black Friday form, with an emphasis on conversation over commerce.
Each also comes with a full disclosure appetizer, and a holiday takeaway for dessert.
1. Amazing cheese from American Cheese Society constituents
Full disclosure number one: The best email of the wider holiday season emanated from a member of the marketing committee for the nonprofit American Cheese Society.
“Reaching out to see if you might enjoy a shipment of recent ACS blue-ribbon winners,” it read. “We send these boxes to media a few times a year to generate awareness of top-tier American cheesemaking.”
Yeehaw-llelujah.
I knew the society was legit after a shotgun introduction to its sister association, the California Artisan Cheese Guild, for its festival at San Francisco’s Ferry Building, and the Carmel Valley cheese pro who helps it go.
The selections proved levitating—dancing through creamy, savory and OMG—on their own.
Also moving was the background on their makers, cheese recipe ideas, and the overall ACS advocacy (including a members’ webinar archive and public tips for cheese lovers).
Each of the four-part tasting helps indicate how diverse and competitive the ACS awards are, drawing from a field of 1,600ish entries.
A Bellwether Farms crème fraîche took the blue ribbon for cow-milk creams both fresh and sour, and remains one of those versatile and victorious items that would be awesome to have on permanent supply. (And is also available at a lot of Monterey Bay grocers.)
The Bellwether operators up in Petaluma recommend trying out a chocolate tart and have developed a video recipe; I opted to make the most luxurious fruit, honey and granola parfait the twenty-first century has seen.
A pillowy number called Leo from California’s Shooting Star Creamery of Paso Robles took first place in the niche soft ripened sheep’s milk category, but the silky and rich palate pleaser could hold up against any soft cheese out there.
A fun backstage nug there: Its creator Avery Jones is still in college—funded by her cheesemaking skills—but has been in the game for years, earning her first ACS blue ribbon at age 15.
The champion from the spicy cheddar slot, Red Butte Hatch Chile from Utah’s Beehive Cheese, still has me scheming quesadillas—and grilled cheeses, and mac ’n’ cheeses, and fondue molten cheeses—with its mellow heat and meltability. As with each entry sent, I must get more.
A final cheese elevated the whole spread, and made good on the ACS’s promise, while teaching vocab: “You’ll look like a totally trend-forward turophile (cheese lover) when you share these West Coast gems.”
The Flagship Reserve by Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, winner for cloth-wrapped cheddar aged at least 13 months, did more than blow my professional chef bud and me away with its mild and dynamic depth. It also charmed his kids, who had sworn off cheddar previously. The complexity reveals how it ranked third best in show out of the hundreds of judged cheeses, and how the Pike’s Place institution also won the category in 2017, 2019 and 2022.
A bonus note, on top of the fact that readers can curate their own cheese gifts or life goals via the websites below, is that the woman who messaged me stocks even more cheese insight as her job: Stephanie Skinner is founder of Culture Cheese Magazine, well worth checking out too.
Same goes for the ACS website.
Holiday takeaway: Cheese can be a perpetually reborn—and reconsidered—reason for the season.
More at bellwetherfarms.com, shootingstarcreamery.com, beehivecheese.com, beechershandmadecheese.com.
2. Sublime beer from Rare Beer Club
Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of RBC, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, since its owner-operator-president Kris Calef sought me out mid-COVID through Liquor.com.
He’s a little like an international version of Post No Bills co-owner/beer sleuth Kye Ricks, seeking out hard-to-get brews to share with an enthusiastic audience.
Only Calef explores further afield than beer to meet personal thirsts, offering five monthly beer clubs total (starting at $37.95 plus shipping) and including The U.S. Microbrewed Beer Club, U.S. and International Variety Beer Club and The Hop Heads Beer Club, plus four wine clubs, a cigar club and even a fresh-cut flower club.
with detailed tasting notes and brewery intel (foreground). (Photo: Mark C. Anderson)
He sent me an installment of his Rare Beer Club ($43.95 plus $15 S&H) and I dropped it on my connoisseur compadres, who I also alerted that Caleb’s flowing a Black Friday price break as this publishes.
Pouring tastes for brew-geek family was not a stroke of generosity. It served as a survival tactic (these were burly ABV beers) and a practical consideration (they’re so flavor-forward that a few ounces proves filling).
They’re also a great representation of what Calef does. Lost Abbey’s The Last Sipper is a 11.5% blended oak-aged imperial brown ale brewed for RBC members to celebrate three decades. Perennial’s Prodigal also weighs in at 11.5%, as an imperial milk stout with chocolate and vanilla.
“Both were real crowd pleasers,” Calef emails me, accurately predicting the response for our celebratory sips. “Go figure.”
Holiday takeaway: Nothing to go figure here. The guy leverage relationships, time-honored credibility and hustle to get suds worthy of the club’s name. Activate the beer nerd bat signal.
More at monthlyclubs.com.
3. Atypical cookbooks inspired by evolving food media
Full disclosure: This is my wackiest, and seemingly weakest, recommendation of the three foodie groups.
And that’s on me: A Simon & Schuster publisher sent me a lineup of “festive cookbooks and more” to vet for possible gift guides, and they were patently interesting, if in a is-this-for-real way.
The options included guides like:
1) The Unofficial Disney Parks Holidays Cookbook from bestselling cookbook author Ashley Craft, which invites home cooks and Disney fans to explore 100 “magical” dishes inspired by Disney’s holiday celebrations and events;
2) Mama Bell’s Big Family Cooking by Heather Bell, aka Mama Bell of @justthebells10, mother of eight (the majority adopted!) and a viral cooking influencer with 6 million followers;
3) the “all-new” Bubbly Cocktail Cards A–Z and Gin Cocktail Cards A–Z, tabbed as “quintessential stocking stuffers,” which feels strong. And fun.
I chose two others to review: A unique present for the Will Ferrell look alike in my life (The Unofficial Elf Cookbook) and a rustic-leaning cocktail guide for the family rancher (The Official Yellowstone Bar Book).
At first the Unofficial Elf lost me with the polar extremity of dishes like Buddy’s Breakfast Spaghetti with fudge sauce, Sno-Caps candy, maple syrup, molasses and one toasted chocolate fudge pop tart over pasta.
Maybe the silliness is the whole point, but it’s nice to prioritize gifts that will be used and generate experience.
But a surprising thing happened as I flipped through further. Various entries like a breakfast tart with candied bacon, arugula, cheddar and Parmesan (the Tinker Training Tart) and even a Snow Angel Soup (with chicken, rice celery, onion, and a celestial sugar shape) reminded me a festive way to use cookbooks is for inspiration, not regulations, and this book actually stocks fun ideas.
The Yellowstone guide, on brand, works more industriously.
Its pages got me thinking on ways to produce bacon fat-washed cocktails, black Manhattans with Guinness syrup and activated charcoal, and smoked cocktails with class, at home, no stress.
Aside from those more involved preparations, the overriding simplicity of many of the drinks also evoked a quote from the “Yellowstone” series’ most valuable cowboy, Rip Wheeler, that goes like this: “You know, when you boil life down, it’s funny just how little you need, isn’t it?”
Holiday takeaway (3/3): Cookbooks, whether penned by world-class chefs or inspired by pop culture, are kindling for creative fire. Keep it lit.
More at simonandschuster.com.
About the author
Mark C. Anderson, Edible Monterey Bay's managing editor, appears on "Friday Found Treasures" via KRML 94.7 every week, a little after 12pm noon. Reach him via mark@ediblemontereybay.com.
