It seems like every year the holiday decorations start showing up earlier in the stores. Three weeks ago, I saw a huge display of artificial Christmas trees ... in a NURSERY. I wanted to go after them with a fake ax.

However, when it comes to holiday shopping, there IS one kind that should be done early. If you want to find some truly unique food gifts online, if you've decided to venture boldly away from the giants like Swiss Colony, Figis and the like, you'll want to start making your selections now. These companies deal in fresh, high-quality items. They don't always have huge shelves full of prepackaged goodies ready to ship. The pastry your gift recipient receives may well have been in an oven a couple of days earlier.

Let's start with something I discovered recently while trying to help a future guest columnist come up with a picture for her work: kringle. If you've never heard of it, here's a short explanation from Eric Olesen at O&H Danish Bakery:

Kringle is a Danish coffee cake known for its feather-light flaky texture and delicious butter pastry. The pastry is rolled into a ring shape and is filled with fruit or nuts selected by the baker. After baking, on most occasions, the kringle is covered with a sweet cream icing.

Danish bakers were pioneers in kringle making. They came upon their skill unintentionally when many years ago in Denmark the bakers wanted to be paid in wages instead of room and board so they walked off their jobs and went on strike. The Danish merchants found replacement bakers from Austria to fill the vacant positions. After the strike was settled and the Danish bakers returned to their jobs they adopted a technique of the Austrian bakers and adjusted it to their own tastes. The Danish bakers began baking items using this technique that creates many layers of butter in the pastry.

In ensuing years, the bakers at O&H refined their art, adding many flavors (such as the most popular: pecan) and a full line of pastries and breads.

If you're worried that a kringle may not be rich enough or unique enough for your intended, according to Eric Olesen (one of the O's in the O&H name), there are 38 layers of butter on each side of the filling. He tells me that besides pecan, which combines select nutmeats with a brown sugar/cinnamon/butterscotch mixture, their raspberry-filled kringle is also not to be missed.

Speaking of missing, if you like what you see, you'd better get your order in by mid-November. Since the products are made and shipped fresh, they "book" oven space for holiday orders and they fill up fast!

Anyone For Brownies?

Just about everyone can make brownies. They're one of the simpler items to whip together and throw ovenward. However, it takes something or someone special to get that magical mix of ingredients balanced in such a manner that eyes roll back in heads, fingers twitch, and the "mmmmmmmmmm" sounds become the only recognizable vocalizations. The folks at Fat Witch have come up with not just one, but eight different brownie creations, from their original, to my favorite blonde brownies, to a breakfast bar brownie that will let you tell yourself you're eating healthfully while in fact getting a morning start on your sweet tooth.

The brownies are baked and out the door in 24 hours. They don't freeze any stock, period. No matter the time of year, the brownies you get were very recently sitting in a toasty-hot oven.

Their fame continues to grow. They've been featured on "Food Finds" on Food Network and in People,Oprah and many other publications. What does this mean for you, sitting there salivating at the brownie pictures and fishing for your credit card? It means get that order in EARLY, bunky, before mid-November is best, to make sure you and your gift recipients get their fill of chocolaty goodness.

If you can't decide what flavor you want, they also have bountiful gift tins that will provide an assortment of flavors.

Tex-Mex Temptation

If you live in one of the many seasoning-challenged areas of the country, or you have friends and relatives who do, salvation is just a click away at TexMexToGo. Annie DuBois, who despite her last name is VERY knowledgeable in all things spicy and snappy, has created a site that is chock-full of salsas, sauces, cooking kits and supplies, and recipes and pepper knowledge. You can even get authentic serapes and holiday lights shaped like chili peppers to give your tree a spicy glow.

Now, Annie's not baking all these items, but sheer volume can overload even the most efficient shipping setup. Get your orders in by early December for surest service.

Pure Popcorn Pleasure

Tired of the same old three-flavor popcorn tins year after year after year? Are you going to heave the next sack of month-old, stale, pseudo-cheese-flavored popcorn with all the texture of Styrofoam peanuts out the window? Help has arrived!

Great Lakes Popcorn, located in the teeming metropolis of Port Clinton, Ohio, has more flavors of 'corn than you can shake a decorative tin at, and they're all fantastic. The popcorn is flavored by means of a flavor slurry, which coats each kernel individually, rather than by a shake-on method that can leave bland spots.

My personal favorite is the spicy "Wild Walleye," although their caramel corn is a very close second.

One final thought: why wait until Christmas or Yule to have your gift delivered? Send it for delivery around Thanksgiving and your gift will stand out from the crowd, and you'll guarantee that your package will not be handled by overworked, overstressed delivery folks who are just trying to get out from under the holiday avalanche. This is especially true if you're sending corporate gifts.

Got a comment? Question? Recipe to share? Drop me a line anytime!