The procrastinator’s gift guide 🎁

A gift for every love language.

A gift for every love language.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we share five gifts that you can put together in less than a week. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate. 

Millionaire’s shortbread at home

If you have: One week to one day left

If your love language is: Acts of service

There’s less than a week until Christmas (🙀), which means we’ve officially entered the Danger Zone for holiday procrastinators. It’s both far away enough to give a false sense of security, but close enough that shipping things from non-Amazon stores is pretty much no longer an option. This is where millionaire’s shortbread, the perfect procrastinator’s food gift, steps in. With a buttery shortbread base, milk caramel filling, and chocolate top, it’s decadent and time consuming enough to be gift-worthy, but you can complete the whole process in one long evening baking session. If you want to prepare the bars in advance, they also freeze beautifully. You could even make the shortbread a few days before you top it off with caramel and chocolate. I loosely followed a recipe from Baking Bites, although there’s plenty more on the internet to choose from, and topped it with milk chocolate and fancy flaked sea salt. Cut into tiny squares and prettily packaged, it makes a great gift. 

Tartine's Panforte with Candied Quince at home

If you have: At least three days left

If your love language is: Acts of service, and you *really, really* want to show it

Do you feel slightly guilty for not being present enough in your family group chat this year? Have you been flaking on Zoom calls? Then boy, do I have a recipe for you. This panforte is a labor of love, and it shows. A dense, confection-like Italian fruit cake filled with fancy nuts and fruits, this project is not for the faint of heart -- you even candy your own quince. You even have to source quince, in this economy! If you gather all the ingredients, you can make it in two days, but it keeps for ages (making it a great confection to ship, since you don’t have to worry about travel time).

A holiday hot chocolate date at Bryant Park 

If you have: A free evening

If your love language is: Quality time

I think one of the best gifts you can give to a loved one during this Plague Year is safe (masked and outdoor), quality, in-person time. Showing up might be the greatest gift of all (if it fits in your risk tolerance, of course). I find that it does wonders to my mental health to do cheerful, non-plague holiday things with friends that just happen to take place outdoors. It makes me feel kind of “normal.” I can’t speak to how crowded the holiday market is the week of Christmas (it might be too busy to feel safe), but I really enjoyed strolling around the market with a friend a few weeks ago; just taking in the sights and sounds fed my soul. Complete your cozy evening by getting a luxurious cup of hot chocolate to go from Angelina (I have not been yet!) and a slice of fancy crepe cake from Lady M to go (the earl grey flavor is divine).

A virtual dance class (or two!) at Steps on Broadway

If you have: No time at all

If your love language is: Uhhh having your partner work on self-improvement?

I love taking theatre dance classes at Steps because it physically pains me to try to express so much enthusiasm with my body, and therefore I know it must be good for me. I keep waiting for some former Soviet ballet teacher to show up and throw away my potato chips, but no. Theatre dance classes are different. They are brought to you by some former Broadway acTOR who dresses in all black, wears lipstick and sparkly earrings, and has more energy and better lines than you could ever imagine having, and encourages you to shout and express yourself!! In other words, I find it so much more excruciating than being yelled at. It also makes a really, really good antidote to the pandemic, because you are literally forced to express joy through your jazz hands. I was pleasantly surprised to find the virtual classes at Steps really well-run (although I don’t want to jinx it!). Actually, they might have been the best-run Zoom meetings I’ve ever attended. The instruction feels warm and inviting to beginners (and depressed potatoes who are non-beginners), maybe even more inviting because you’re bringing it home. For a unique non-food gift to the Broadway lover in your life, I highly recommend purchasing a three-week theatre dance workshop with Lainie Munro; it’s only $75 for classes twice a week. (Kathryn Sullivan, who runs the ballet workshop, was my dance teacher throughout college and is also great, with the usual ballet teacher quirks.)

Cozy, by Jan Brett at home

If you have: One to two days to order from Amazon, or an evening to stop by Books of Wonder

If your love language is: Quality time, both together and apart

I think that children’s books are really wonderful and should not be limited for just children to read. The good ones are sort of like minimalist, heartwarming graphic novels with great art rolled into one. As a kid, I loved all the animal-themed books by Jan Brett and stopping by Books of Wonder the other evening, I was excited to see that, two decades later, her works are still as charming. Cozy is a book about a wooly musk ox in the arctic, and the setting is perfect for the (currently) snowy New York City. This is the only traditional, physical-object, non-food, non-homemade gift I have on this list, but I couldn’t resist adding it, for all the children and inner-children in your life.

Happy holidays,
Soph