Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy Holiday Gift Guide for Home Cooks: Our Most-Used, Most-Loved Kitchen Essentials
Are you overwhelmed trying to find holiday gifts? Want to give a home cook a gift they will truly use and love?
If you’ve ever wanted to give a food friend a present that feels both thoughtful and useful, this episode is your guide. As two cooks who have spent countless hours in real home kitchens, we’re sharing the gifts that genuinely make a difference: reliable tools, pantry items that transform simple meals, and unique products that help people cook and host with more ease, beauty, and deliciousness.
By the end of this episode, you’ll discover:
- A wide range of gift ideas — from edible treats to equipment upgrades — all items we personally use, love, and have gifted (or been gifted!) ourselves
- Options across every price point, from everyday essentials to splurge-worthy standouts
- Meaningful ways to give this season that support small businesses, local makers, and your wider food community
Tune in now for our curated list of this year’s most-loved gifts for home cooks and food friends!
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This episode is sponsored by Mill – the odorless, effortless, automated food recycler.
This time of year, we’re doing more cooking and hosting, which also means creating more food scraps. We love that with Mill, all those peels, bones, and bits don’t go to waste. You toss them in, and overnight, it quietly transforms everything into dry grounds. You can use them in your garden, add to compost, or schedule them to be picked up and shared with farms.
Mill is the easiest way to prevent food waste at home. It’s one small action that makes a big difference for your kitchen, your family, and the planet.
Add Mill to your wish list or gift one now! Their biggest sale of the season is on, and you’ll get up to $200 Off through Monday, December 1st. Missed the sale? You can still get $75 off anytime at mill.com/foodfriends with code FRIENDS.
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Links:
Kitchen Equipment & Serving:
Bialetti/Moca Pot for Espresso Lover + Smeg Electric tea kettle
Holland Bowl Mill + Nice towels basic and fancy
Enamelware, like the kind from Crow Canyon or Falcon
Mill – the odorless, effortless, automated food recycler
Everyday Kitchen Essentials:
Good-smelling fancy dish soap, like Koala Eco, or Heirloom Tomato from Flamingo Estate
Earlywood flat wooden spatula
Aprons – Kari loves Hedley & Bennett, and Sonya swears by White Bark Workwear
Edible Gifts:
Good vanilla, like Kari’s favorite Heilala vanilla bean paste, or Sonya’s go-to Beyond Good pure ground vanilla
Kishu mandarins from The Mandarin Man or a box of passion fruit from California
Freddy Guy Hazelnuts from Oregon
Rancho Gordo’s “20 Big Ones” gift box, or heirloom beans from Blue House Farm,
Los Poblanos Albuquerque
Spicytude spice blends
Subscriptions:
Thrive Market membership
Fun Gifts for Food Friends:
Farmers’ market calendar or prints from Aly Miller Illustrations
Gift card to your favorite local (to you) restaurant)
Culinary bookstore gift cards to: Book Larder (Seattle), Vivienne (Portland), Now Serving (LA), Omnivore Books (SF), Bonnie Slotkin Cookbooks (NY), or find a store near you
GIVING:
The Midnight Mission in Los Angeles
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Got a cooking question? Leave us a message on our hotline at: 323-452-9084
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We love hearing from you — follow us on Instagram @foodfriendspod, or drop us a line at foodfriendspod@gmail.com!
Looking for an in-person Food Friends experience? Book a farmers’ market tour with Sonya in Portland, OR!