When it comes to holiday presents, consumables are the way to go.
I distinctly remember the year my mom hit her limit on scented lotion and candles. She didn’t want a stocking full of stuff — she wanted snacks. And she was right: Who doesn’t love to nibble on a treat while the rest of the presents are unwrapped?
When I’m playing Santa, I opt for Japanese candies from Always Full Asian Market, a tallboy of my husband’s favorite hard-to-find IPA or, to give local businesses a holiday boost, restaurant gift cards. Stockings should have a little bit of luxury, a touch of whimsy, something purely practical, and something to open and enjoy immediately, IMO.
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With those categories in mind, we looked around Vermont for the small holiday pleasures we’d like to receive, whether in a Christmas stocking (they all fit) or for Hanukkah, which starts the evening of December 25. They’re not all consumable, but they’re all food- and drink-themed. Bon appétit, and happy holidays!
— J.B.
Silver and Gold
Lemonfair Saffron’s 100% Pure Saffron, $34-98. Available at lemonfairsaffron.com and Vergennes Laundry.
That’s what everyone wishes for, right? I have a slight tweak to the classic Burl Ives Christmas song: Instead of gold, I’ll take saffron.
Since trying the saffron cake at South Burlington’s Zaytoona last month, I can’t get the spice’s delicate, earthy flavor out of my mind. And it’s hard to find something more luxurious — one 500-milligram jar of Lemonfair Saffron contains crimson threads from roughly 80 handpicked saffron crocus flowers, all grown on family farms in Vermont.
Lemonfair is one of a rapidly growing number of independent spice sellers around the country; co-owners Hannah Marks, 32, and Parker Shorey, 40, split their time between Shorey’s native Ferrisburgh and Brooklyn. Shorey started the biz in 2017 after reading the first publication from the University of Vermont’s North American Center for Saffron Research & Development.
“Saffron in Vermont is newish,” Shorey said. “It doesn’t have a thousand-year history, like in the Mediterranean, but the farms we work with are probably the most experienced in North America.”
These days, the married couple source from a collective of farms from the Champlain Valley to Wells River. After harvest in late October and early November, they slowly dry the saffron threads over the coals of a hardwood fire — a process that changes the color and flavor, giving the end product a toasted finish.
“If you’re somewhere hot and dry, you can put it out in the sun and it will dry perfectly,” Marks said. “Not in Vermont. It’s the two of us standing over a fire, drying the most expensive spice in the world. It can be tense.”
That expense makes saffron intimidating to use, the couple acknowledged. Infusing it into honey helps it to last, Marks suggested — just a few strands can make a big flavor impact.
If Santa brought me a jar, I wouldn’t be tempted to spoil Zaytoona’s cake by trying to re-create it with my average baking skills. But I did just see a recipe for adding saffron to pre-batched freezer martinis, which seems awfully festive.
Another luxurious idea:
Upgrade the ol’ orange-in-a-stocking move with NU Chocolat’s candied Italian orange slices, which are half-dipped in Colombian dark chocolate. ($24 for a six-piece box. Available at NU Chocolat in Burlington, nuchocolat.com.)
— J.B.
Ear Snacks
Jenjems food earrings, $15-35. Available at jenjemsvt.com.
Even though I have amassed more than 100 pairs of earrings in my life, my family knows that I always expect a new pair tucked into the toe of my stocking. On the culinary theme, I have received eggplants, whisks, antique teaspoons and honeybees — but nothing (yet) as appetizingly adorable as Jenny Rossi’s dollhouse-scale, sculpted bagels, cookies, and slices of pizza or chocolate cake.
Rossi, 40, started what she described as her side microbusiness in 2020. “It was a great pandemic sanity saver,” she said. Painstakingly applying icing to a tiny scone, making eyes on wee lumpy spuds and sculpting individual pepperoni rounds for pizzas, “I get in the zone,” Rossi explained.
The Winooski resident hand-shapes each tiny work of art out of polymer clay and colors them with pastel chalks, right down to realistic burn marks and potato blemishes. “Everything should have some imperfection,” she said.
Food was a natural focus because “it’s one of our earliest, greatest relationships,” Rossi said. “These are the things that give us succor and strength.”
The dishes and occasional raw ingredients she replicates are her favorites. She does not take custom orders, though she does make magnet and hangable wall-art versions on little plates for those who don’t wear earrings.
The lox bagels (with teeny capers!), cinnamon buns, cannoli and Hollandaise-drenched eggs Benedict are generally smaller than a quarter, but the pizza slices can be as long as a pinkie finger. “Those are for people who want to get comments on their earrings,” Rossi said.
I’d wager that whichever Jenjems hang from my ears, they will get comments.
Another whimsical wearable:
Restaurant merch is so much more than matchbooks and pens these days — such as the Buttery’s cool camo hat, with the café’s name emblazoned in hunting-season orange death-metal font. ($32. Available at the Buttery in St. Johnsbury, thebutteryvt.com.)
— M.P.
Bowl Me Over
K.B. Ceramics ramekins, $38 for a set of four. Available at katebuttceramics.com and Thirty-odd in Burlington.
There are some kitchen utensils you only need one of: a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, for example, or a great chef’s knife. Then there are items I cannot seem to resist stockpiling, such as the small bowls known as ramekins. I have about two dozen and can rattle off an equal number of uses.
When I cook, ramekins hold spices, minced garlic and chopped herbs for my mise en place. If hands must go wrist-deep into dough, a ramekin keeps my rings safe. Filled with jams, mustards and olives, ramekins grace cheese boards and appetizer platters. They also come to the dining table as personal olive oil, soy sauce or maple syrup dippers. I could go on, but this is all just a preamble (aka justification) to establish that those who cook and host can never have too many ramekins.
I will confide that I occasionally buy something for my own stocking. And yes, I may have done that recently with the hand-thrown ramekins from K.B. Ceramics of Putney.
The sweet, two-inch-tall ramekins fit in the palm of my hand and come in a choice of soft, peaceful glaze colors, including rose, mist and lichen.
Kate Butt, 39, said her ceramics, which are dishwasher- and microwave-safe, are “meant to be used in your daily life around cooking and sharing food.” She modeled the ramekins on small Chinese tea bowls and deploys them as salt cellars and to hold prepped ingredients. Butt even uses them every morning to share a little of her breakfast smoothie with her dogs.
Sharing with pets: reason No. 27 why you need more ramekins.
Another practical purchase:
AO Glass crafts its small, sparkling Jenny Lind bowls using a vintage mold that came with an 1880s antique glass press. ($38. Available at AO Glass in Burlington, aoglass.com.)
— M.P.
Top Tipples
La Montañuela’s Cecelia oxidative wine, $28 for 375 ml. Available at Specs in Winooski. Learn more at lamontanuela.com.
If you’d asked me last year what I really wanted for the holidays, I would have said, “A wine bar I can walk to from my house.” A year later, I got my wish.
10 Green Street, a stunning, welcoming wine bar and furniture showroom from La Montañuela winemaker Camila Carrillo and furniture maker Nathan D’Aversa, held its soft opening in Vergennes at the end of November. State liquor license pending, the married couple will fully open their joint venture this weekend. I can’t wait.
I’m well aware that an entire wine bar doesn’t fit in a stocking, but slim bottles do. It may not be the Christmas-morning norm to uncork some sherry, but that’s what I hope to do with La Montañuela’s sherry-inspired oxidative wine, Cecelia.
Carrillo, 32, began her Flor del Campo project in 2018, not long after she started working with Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber at Domaine La Garagista. She set out to see if Vermont’s hybrid grapes could yield a similar product to the sherry she’d tasted while working harvest internships abroad. (Carrillo and Heekin also make a line of oxidative wines called Lost Causes & Desperate Cases, which they started at the same time.)
Cecelia, named for Carrillo’s maternal grandmother, is one of three sherry-style wines in the series. She blends wine from la crescent grapes grown in West Addison year after year, solera style, and ages it in a 50-year-old amontillado barrel from one of her favorite winemakers, Bodegas COTA 45 in Jerez, Spain. Unlike traditional sherries, Carrillo’s oxidative wines aren’t fortified with additional spirits. Still, Cecelia is more robust than Aura, which uses the same base wine but skips the barrel. The wine’s nutty, caramel flavors linger after each sip.
“It’s been a labor of love and definitely a long process,” Carrillo said. “I had to wait six years until I had enough wine to bottle, but it was well worth it.”
I’ll toast to that, both at home and at the new bar up the street.
Another immediately consumable beverage:
Holiday excitement got the kids up early? Be prepared with a can of nitro flash-chilled coffee from Brio Coffeeworks. ($5. Available at Brio Coffeeworks in Burlington, briocoffeeworks.com.)
— J.B.
Small Pleasures is an occasional column that features delicious and distinctive Vermont-made food or drinks that pack a punch. Send us your favorite little bites or sips with big payoff at food@sevendaysvt.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Holiday Hits | Food- and drink-themed stocking stuffers fit for a food writer”
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2024.
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