Pigeon Cottage Kitchen

My birthday falls on St Andrew’s Day at the end of November. Every year for the past few years, my daughter has made me a personalised beauty advent calendar. She collects samples and other lovely things she knows I’ll like throughout the year and fills an old Cult Beauty advent calendar box with them. The final box always contains something super nice or full sized. It’s like having a birthday every day until Christmas.

It’s such a thoughtful and lovely gift so, when BBC Radio Suffolk asked me to offer my top tips for making a personalised advent calendar for a foodie, I had a ball! You can listen in to Thordis’ BBC Suffolk show on Sunday November 24th from 10am, I’ll be on at about 10.40.

So, here are my ideas for making a beautiful and thoughtful advent calendar although you could just as easily make a personalised foodie Xmas stocking to give you scope for layering slightly bigger or awkwardly sized items. The best one would go into the foot of the stocking for that grand finale super-gift! A copy of my recipe book Whats4teaMum? would be perfect for that of course!

Pigeon Cottage Kitchen – top tips for a foodie Advent calendar

The whole point of this gift is to put in things that you think the person you’re making it for will really like so this is just for inspo not the Gospel. You can share your ideas in the comments box.

• Sweets: individually wrapped sweets or chocolates like Lindor, Quality Street, Cadbury’s Roses or Heroes would all work really well and won’t break the bank. Bags of nice sweets like Candy Kittens and upmarket bars of chocolate like Lindt, Green and Blacks or Tony’s Chocoloney are our family favourites and would work well in a stocking. We always buy orange and stem ginger dipped in dark chocolate from Emmett’s of Peasenhall, our favourite Suffolk foodie haunt. Their crystallized fruit is to die for!
• Tea: individually wrapped teabags – Pukka, Twinings and Taylors make lovely boxes of interesting classic, herbal or fruit teas. Put the individual ones in an advent calendar, a whole box or a tin of nice leaf tea in a stocking.
• Coffee: if whoever you make the calendar for has Nespresso or other coffee pod machine, you could put a few specialty coffee pods in as they usually have special ones for Christmas. For a stocking, a nice bag of luxury beans or ground coffee works really well.
• Drinking chocolate: hot chocolate is always popular for Xmas so how about some special hot chocolate mixes with a pack of mini marshmallows or tiny liqueurs that go well like hazelnut, cinnamon or vanilla?
• Drinks and mixers: mini-tonic cans – pick the unusual ones like Spanish Clementine from Fevertree or blood orange soda as they make a lovely seasonal cocktail with a dash of Campari or Sevilla Gin. Make it extra special by writing out a cocktail recipe and put in the drawer with the tonic. You can buy mini bottles of made up cocktails or add mini spirit bottles.
• Specialty ingredients: bottles of speciality ingredients like Neilson Massey vanilla essence or paste, little bottles of Tabasco or hot sauce, upmarket brands of horseradish (mine is from Tracklements) or curry pastes (mine is from the wonderful restaurant brand Gymkhana), chilli jam or chutneys (I make Pigeon Cottage Kitchen chutneys in small jars for Xmas gifts around September time). Waitrose ‘Cook’s Ingredients’ come in nice little plastic pots that work well in a calendar drawer or a stocking. I’ve also got some posh ‘Fleur de sel’ salt I brought back from France in the summer that I can decant into smaller packets.
• Spice mixes: many of the curries I write up on the website use special spice mixes. I make up large batches, put them in small ziplock bags, print out the recipe and put them in a little drawer together.
• Recipes: to make a more budget but still thoughtful calendar, how about printing off or hand writing a series of favourite recipes and putting those in little envelopes? You could always intersperse a few IOU’s with a promise of you doing the washing up or cooking a meal for them or a dining gift voucher?
• Cook’s equipment: you don’t have to fill every drawer with actual food or drink, how about a special tea spoon, an espresso cup, a small gadget like a garlic press, mini pastry shape cutters, a tiny nutmeg grater or a ball of fancy cook’s string?

Whatever you decide, the important thing is that you have chosen every item with them in mind and that means that there’s also a little bit of love in every drawer!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

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