I enjoy the Eden Organic brand of yellow mustard.

Ingredients: Raw Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, Water, Organic Yellow Mustard Seed, Eden Sea Salt, Organic Turmeric, Organic Paprika, Organic Garlic.

It has a strong mustard taste and a bright yellow color.  A little goes a long way so I’ll probably have this jar for awhile.

My crazily-talented friend Ellie designed wine labels for her design company, Flywheel, to give away for holiday gifts.

I’m full of indecision.  Whether I could justify becoming a client-quickly!-to get a leftover bottle of this awesome wine.

Whether I’d choose the wine that complements beef or duck or pork.

Whether I could ever be as funny as the backside of the label:

Spiced jarred peaches and cranberries come together for a delicious warm compote. Perfect for Christmas morning or… even Christmas Eve morning!

Spiced Peach Cranberry Compote

Recipe by Hilary

1. Drain syrup from jarred peaches into heavy medium saucepan.  Add cranberries and stir.  Heat on medium, covered, stirring occasionally, until cranberries pop.

2. Think about how large you want your peaches to be in the compote.  If you’re serving the dish on its own plate, perhaps you want to keep the peaches as halves.  Or, maybe you want them to be smaller, in which case you should cut them now.  Also, discard the couple of cloves from the jarred peaches- they’ll be difficult to remove (and to remember to remove) from the final dish.

3. Add peaches to cranberries and stir.  Sprinkle the dash of cinnamon (being careful not to let it get clumpy) and stir again.  Add a bit of sugar and taste.  Then continue adding sugar until you’re happy with the level of sweetness.

4. Serve warm.

*I was very pleased with Rosie’s Spiced Peaches (Stello Foods) in this recipe.  The peaches are beautiful and the spices add a wintry flavor and aroma to the compote.  You could also use your own canned peaches and spices.  Fresh peaches technically could work, but fresh peach season doesn’t align with hot-fruit-compote season so well. 

Dave’s Gourmet Spicy Heirloom Marinara Organic Pasta Sauce proves that bottled pasta sauces are capable of incredible things. 

1. It’s way easier and quicker than homemade.

2. It’s tastier than homemade.

3. I know this because I tried to recreate this pasta sauce.  No matter the organic spicy heirloom ingredients I threw into it, the flavors fell short.

4. Time to take on this challenge yourself… or by gifting it to someone who might be inspired to try.

Dave’s Gourmet, $7.99

Olives by La Novia Del Sol (via AJ Gourmet Foods) are not your typical jarred olives.

They render fancy olive-bar olives (even Mario Batali restaurant olives) rather… uninspiring.

Really, how can you beat Feta-Stuffed Green Spanish Olives?

Perhaps with Orange-Stuffed Olives?

Strike that, my favorite is the unabashedly-picante Habanero Pepper-Stuffed Olives.

Olive lovers rejoice!

AJ Gourmet Foods, $5.99 per jar (discounts for larger quantities)

“I am Chocolatey” T-Shirt by Tcho Chocolate.

Order them for the whole family and claim yours first.  Who gets “I am Nutty”?

Tcho, $15

The perfect gift for your favorite Frequent-Flyer-with-Taste-Buds: Mobile Foodie Survival Kit.

Never suffer from bland road food again! The Organic Mobile Foodie Kit features small pots of organic basil, cayenne, cinnamon, ground cloves, curry, dill, granulated garlic, ginger, mustard powder, nutmeg, onion powder, oregano, paprika, pepper, and thyme; plus sea salt, wasabi powder, and Tabasco sauce. Packaged in a slim aluminum tin, with a key to which is which.

This would also be convenient for people who rent beach/mountain houses with kitchens; just throw this together with ingredients you pick up at the nearest grocery store and get cookin’.

Flight 001, $35

I like homemade treats, but candy can be difficult to make. Plus Jo’s Candies certainly is better with a candy thermometer than I (or even Dan of Candy Addict).

A box of Toffee Nuggets comes with 3 milk chocolate and 3 dark chocolate toffees, covered in almonds. One box for $12.75, two boxes for $20.

Peppermint Crunch involves white chocolate that is mixed with peppermint oil and covered dark chocolate. One 9-ounce tin goes for $17.00.

They don’t skimp on the chocolate and they’re perfect with a cup of hot cocoa or a tall glass of cold milk.

Today I happened upon some Tostitos Baked! SCOOPS! at work.

Being a sucker for any food product with not only one but two exclamation points in its name, I scarfed down a personal-sized bag. Apparently that was equivalent, dietary fat-wise, to scarfing down just half of a bag of “regular tortilla chips.”

The texture is unmistakably Baked! in its bland and slightly cardboard-like flavor. Thankfully they did taste a bit saltier than the flat Baked! Tostitos I tried a few years ago.

What’s more, the Scoops!–pardon me, forgot to use Caps Lock–SCOOPS! come in a shell shape perfect for, you guessed it, SCOOPing. Filling ‘em with salsa, green pea thyme dip, or pretty much anything else with flavor is almost certain to add some legitimacy to all those exclamation points.

I love the website Etsy to discover unique, handmade goods from individuals all over the world.

Spoons Apron- red is the handiwork of Cape Town, South Africa artist skinnylaminx.

I love the teapot as an added photo element. She seems like a woman who would be comforting to talk to.