2015 Holiday Gift Guide and GIVEAWAY
It’s that time of year again! I’m so excited to be doing another gift guide this year because it’s the one time each year that I get to share all of my favorite things with you. Some of them are food and budget related, some of them aren’t, but all of them would make great gifts. If you need extra ideas, click over to the 2014 Gift Guide to see what I recommended last year.
Plus, I’ve got a pretty valuable giveaway at the bottom of the post (courtesy of Jacqueline Smith), so be sure to scroll down and check that out!
Budget Bytes 2015 Gift Guide
This list includes some affiliate links, but I was not paid or coerced to include any of these products. The list was built solely at my discretion. :D
1. Instant Pot – Confession time: I impulse bought this on Black Friday after seeing it in another blogger’s Instagram feed. I just got it the other day and already know that this item is going to LIVE on my counter top. I can’t wait to cook all the things with my new fancy Instant Pot (hello YOGURT)! Keep an eye on the price. I got mine for $78 and the the price has been bouncing around between $100-$130 in the days since.
2. Crock Pot 6-qt Slow Cooker
– If the 7-in-1 Instant Pot is a bit out of your price range (I feel ya), a good, old-fashioned, basic slow cooker is still an excellent gift. The one simple item can open up a whole world of cooking, from beans to soups and slow cooked meat. This item is an inexpensive work horse!
3. Love Your Leftovers – If there’s one thing I’m not very good at, it’s coming up with new uses for my leftovers. I usually just end up eating the same meal for five days in a row. If that’s not your jam, check out this awesome book from fellow food blogger, Nick from Macheesmo.com, that provides multiple ways to use leftovers from classic dishes, like roast chicken, potatoes, or even bread! I just got this book and it’s FULL of great ideas.
4. Good and Cheap – This amazing book is full of recipes designed to help you survive on a SUPER low budget. Inspired by SNAP allowances, these recipes aim to keep you fed on about $4 per day. That’s what I’m talking about.
5. The Food Lab – One of the reasons I love cooking is because there is actually a lot of science involved. Molecules shift, change shape, and rearrange themselves to create new substances through physical and chemical manipulation. This book lays it all out for the scientist who also loves to cook (with LOTS of pictures!).
6. Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine – I love the Wine Folly website and I’m super excited that they’ve put all their great info into a book. Not just any book, but a book with tons of cool charts, graphs, and infographics (that’s the science lover in me again)! If you know someone who wants to learn about wine in a fun, easy, unpretentious way, Wine Folly is where it’s at.
7. Threes Knees Spicy Trio – The Bees Knees spicy honey was on my gift guide last year and since then I’ve also purchased the Trees Knees spicy maple syrup. The syrup is my favorite so far (insanely good), but that might only be because I haven’t tried the sriracha yet. The trio of products makes a great gift and is very reasonably priced for the holidays. I’ve already ordered one for myself! :D
8. Rezip – If you have an environmentally conscious cook on your list, these reusable zip bags are a cool little gift. They’re not only great for packing your lunch, but they’re also freezer friendly so you can save your leftovers in them! (BPA, PVC, and lead free!)
9. Lodge Cast Iron Casserole with Skillet Cover – Cast iron always makes a great gift because it can last a lifetime, if not generations. This set is particularly cool because the skillet doubles as a lid for the dutch oven/casserole dish. It’s two for the price of one!
10. Hexagon Wool Felt Coasters – I really love handmade gifts because they’re not only unique, but they help support an entrepreneur. Etsy is a great place to find handmade gifts and I have to highly suggest these cool felt coasters. I bought a set of them last year (in a mix of different grey colors) and they’re SO cool. They still look brand new and I always get compliments on them. :D
11. Hand Stamped Spoons – Here’s another super cute handmade gift for that person in your life that is addicted to cold cereal. And if you like the idea, but not that particular saying, you can request a custom spoon with whatever whimsical words you like.
12. Kombucha Kit – This kit is great for that person in your life who loves DIY and loves kombucha. Kombucha can run $3-$4 per bottle at the store, so this kit will pay for itself in NO TIME. Plus, it’s a fun science experiment! Woot!
13. Ninj & Ninj Financial Planner – Despite how digital my world has gotten, some things are still really satisfying to do with pen and paper. I still love planners, and this hand designed financial planner is so cool (and beautiful, I might add). It comes with all sorts of cool extras to make planning actually kind of fun!
14. Go Sugar Free – Last summer I had the pleasure of participating in the Go Sugar Free online course, which aims to help people achieve their best health and end their addiction to added sugar. I was extremely impressed with how well researched and designed this program was, and how much Jacqueline, the program creator, cares about the participants. A Go Sugar Free membership is the perfect gift for someone who is really looking to change their dietary habits and lifestyle, and make 2016 the year of change. I might even repeat the course this spring to recalibrate after the holidays because once you join, you have a lifetime membership and can retake the course as many times as you’d like. Registration is going on now for the Winter course, which starts on January 6th. Courses are limited to a small number to make sure everyone gets individual attention, so make sure to register early!
If you’re interested in the course, but it’s not in your budget at this time, check out the giveaway below, or sign up for the Go Sugar Free newsletter to stay posted about scholarship opportunities.
Go Sugar Free GIVEAWAY!
Because the Go Sugar Free course can be a big investment, Jacqueline kindly offered to give away one free membership and registration for the winter course to one of my readers. We both really want to make this course available to people who need it. With the Go Sugar Free course you get:
- 9.5 weeks of daily lessons
- Substantial one-to-one work with Jacqueline
- Access to the GSF Recipe Library’s 900+ recipes and recipe additions to follow
- Membership into the GSF private community where you can access Jacqueline’s support and that of fellow members
- 30+ course videos, 25+ tools and exercises, and 9 weekly check-ins
- The ability to take future GSF courses, and utilize all these resources as a graduate, as much as you like, for free
So now that you’ve got all the details, you can enter the giveaway using the Rafflecopter widget below. Once logged in with either your Facebook account or your email, you can submit up to three entries using the methods offered in the widget. But hurry, the giveaway is only running through December 11th! Good luck!
I really like the pots you feature, but what I really would like are heart shaped sponges from Tiger, a cute 1liter flask (klean kanteen has amazing ones) expensive ingredients (buckwheat flour), nut bags to sift my almond milk, a new glass kettle, some kind of veggie delivery service..also I recently got the ikea glass containers that are oven and freezer proof, with spill proof lids like glass tupperware..they are SO great and cheap! I take them to work, bake bread in them, freeze leftovers, make lasagne and tiramisù in them. They would be a great gift!
I got the same deal on the instant pot. Used it last night for the first time. I can’t wait to see the recipes you share!
I bought “The Food Lab” for my BIL for Christmas. So happy it comes highly recommended!
I can 100% recommend the Instant Pot. I’d buy a truckload and hand them out to everyone I love if I could. The upfront cost seemed high, but that thing has paid for itself and then some in five months.
How so? I’m not good at remembering to put anything in the crock pot in the morning, so the speed that thing offers is a boon. I’ve made beef stew for two that rocks in just over 30 mins in it, for example. It also doubles as a crock pot if I need one for some reason, so Ol’ Crocky may end up at Goodwill. I can saute in it and go right to the next step with anything too, which is swell for saving me from the perils of dish washing. I pre-prep potatoes in it all the time, so they can be ready in lightning fast time for other meals later in the week. I use the Instant Pot more than my stove top these days and over the summer I used it nearly every day, to avoid oven heat. Basically, it saves me time, which means I’m more likely to cook, which saves me money in the long run.
That brand is tops, as it has a quality stainless inner pot. OK, done sounding like a commercial. I’m an Instant Pot evangelist though, so I can’t help it! Love that thing!
I am kicking myself for not picking up the Instant Pot on Black Friday! Maybe Santa will be nice to me this year. Happy Holidays, Beth! Love your recipes.
I discovered Good and Cheap maybe a year ago while doing research, (I want to do the same sort of thing). I was psyched to find it, and a pdf. download is free. I think if you buy a hardcopy, she gives one away to someone who needs it – very cool. I’d love to know what research she did for this project. The recipes are not really up my alley – scones, poutine, Mexican street corn…not a lot of things I would personally spend my precious food dollars to make. She was in school in NYC but is from Canada, so maybe it’s a cultural disconnect for me. But that’s the beauty of people sharing ideas to eat on the cheap. (Beth – your recipes/costs are the best I’ve found!) The best parts of Good and Cheap to me, are the list of pantry staples (herbs, spices), and Things on Toast! So easy to forget the simple, obvious beauty of Things on Toast! It definitely has a unique take on the subject.
I’d never heard of the Instant Pot until I read the review at thekitchn.com. I think I might be interested if I were still working and raising a family. As it is I’m only interested in appliances that do things I can’t do: blender, food processor and a mixer.
I have Good and Cheap and like it very much. I sampled Love Your Leftovers on my Kindle and then bought it. I can’t say it’s going to revolutionize the way I cook and eat, but it will give me a lot of ideas for how to cook one thing and use it in many ways. One of the things I like is that while the recipes using the leftovers are designed to feed more people, I can cut most of them down to serve one. With only a few exceptions I hate making a dish with leftovers that creates MORE leftovers.
I’m interested in the Go Sugar Free course; I remember you’ve discussed it before. I notice that your recipes are not sugar- or processed grain-free these days. Could you speak to this? Part of my hesitation in signing up for the course is that I don’t actually want to live the rest of my life without sugar or flour. I’d be interested in hearing about the balance you’ve found.
Love the list – I can’t say I’ll use it this holiday, because I already own almost everything you’ve listed! Ha!
I think the course is very well designed and would be extremely helpful for people who have an addiction to added sugars or processed foods. I don’t feel like I have a problem with that (I’m not that into sweets and can usually cut them out without hesitation), but was offered the course for free, so I took it anyway. Despite not having issues with sugar myself, I still learned a LOT about myself and my eating habits, and how added sugars affect the body. I’ll probably retake the course every once in a while to refresh and keep my eating habits in check, but I feel like my diet is pretty balanced as is. :) I like having the freedom to use a touch of sugar here or there and use regular pasta or flour on occasion. I think it’s a bit like alcohol. Some people can handle small intake without getting out of hand, while others need to cut it out 100%. At the very least, the course is an excellent exercise in self awareness and mindful eating.
Go Sugar Free allows you to choose how sugar-free you want to be and, in the course of 2 months, you may change your goals. It’s very flexible and convincing. I have lost 26 pounds by going sweetner-free: no to counting points, yes to eating delicious food. Better sleep, much better facial skin. Because I felt addicted to sugar, I didn’t like being under it’s control. Now I’m in control. The course addresses the whole person and is evidence-based.
I am SO stoked you got an Instant Pot and will be sharing recipes for it! I’m a PotHead (hehe) and absolutely love mine. I joined an IP FB group just a few short weeks ago and the member number was a little under 5,000 and now it’s at 14,000 in just that short time. We’re all obsessed!
Hahahaha a “PotHead”. :D
Wow, I just went to check out the double dutch oven and couldn’t believe the difference in price. US AMAZON is $50, CANADIAN AMAZON is $100! I guess that will have to wait for another day.
Ouch! That’s such a bummer! :(
After seeing your list I asked for The Food Lab. I can’t wait to read it!
I would love a review of the InstaPot once you have played with it. Space is an issue, appliances that have more than one function are great. I know that pressure cooking will be great but what about the rice cooker and slow cooker functions?
Coincidentally, the folks over at thekitchn.com (VERY trustworthy) just posted their review after using for 8 months! Also, a lot of readers who own them chimed in down in the comments section, so I found that helpful.
Nice gift ideas! I have a copy of The Food Lab, and it’s so worth the price. The honey looks super fun, but I would have no clue what to do with it. Put it on toast? Drink it?
Personally, I would like some sort of blender or food processor. My hall’s communal blender is very bent up and sad. I think that your cookbook would also be a great gift for anyone who can’t cook. At my college, students don’t get a meal plan for the month of January, so anything that helps students buy groceries and cook would be super helpful.
The website for the company that makes the honey has a bunch of recipes and ideas for using it. It’s seriously good on everything. :D I started with a buttered biscuit and never looked back… (not to mention cocktails)
I want all of the books on this list!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too.