Gifts That Show You Care

The holidays are a great opportunity to spend some time with your loved ones but they are often a time when we tend to overspend, over shop and of course, over eat. If these holidays, you want to avoid all the gluttony and yet present your friends and family with something meaningful, take a look at some of our edible and really healthy gift ideas.

• Instead of spending hours caught in traffic and spending huge amounts on gifts that you are not even sure will be used, you could spend the same amount of time at home, looking up recipes for healthy wholesome food. You will not only be presenting everyone with gifts that speak of your thoughtfulness but you would have also learnt some wonderful recipes that you can regularly make use of in the future.
• You can use your imagination and creativity to pack edible gifts. The choices are many – use salad dressing bottles that can be re-decorated, gift boxes can be lined with parchment paper and foil for a lovely feel, cellulose bags (plant based) can be used to hold many items and finally different sized canning jars can be used to pack many of your edible gift items.
• When you are packing your homemade cookies or breads, use zippered bags. Place them one layer after another, using a parchment paper to separate the layers. You could also place a piece each of unbleached paper towel and place them, one at the bottom and one at the top so that all the moisture can be absorbed.
• Use this trick to make sure that almost all the air has been removed from the bags in which you have packed your edible items. Place a straw about two to three inches into the bag. Now inhale deeply through the straw so that you can pull out as much air from inside the bag, out. Quickly pinch the straw shut. Now remove the straw and again quickly close the mouth of the bag so that no air goes in. You can now refrigerate or freeze the bag
• Jars are a wonderful way in which you can present your edible gifts. It is best to use wide-mouth canning jars for liquid items that could perish easily. To get the edible food inside the jar, use a wide mouth funnel to pour the liquid inside the jar. Make sure you do not fill till the brim of the jar, as the contents tend to expand during freezing. Before freezing, make sure that the contents in the jar have cooled to about room temperature. While presenting the gift, you should give proper instructions on whether to refrigerate it or freeze it.
• You could now decorate your jars with any kind of decorative fabric and top them up with ribbons. Cut fabric pieces that are about two-inches wider than the top of the jars – place them on top of the sealed jars and then screw on the metal bands.