Gourmet Gift of the Day Blog

Jim Beam and Jack Daniels don’t just make whiskey, they also sell a number of tasty snack foods, flavored coffees and desserts.  A few of these items have been combined into a red gift pail – along with chips, crackers and beer nuts – to create a memorable gift for Father’s Day, a summer birthday or for no reason at all!  The Jim Beam bourbon fudge is smooth and creamy, the salsa is chunky and flavorful, and the rest of the components are just as good!  My husband and I share this pail very well – he takes the savory items and I lay claim to the sweets.  We found this gourmet gift online for $53 plus $10.95 shipping.

Featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show and the Home Shopping Network, the Tortuga Rum Company has spent the last 20 years perfecting their top secret rum cake recipe.  This combo features their wildly popular 16 oz Golden Rum Cake paired with an 8 oz package of Rum Cream Coffee.  The fun containers show an elaborate pirate ship logo and the reasonable price of $29.95 includes shipping so you can order one for yourself without feeling guilty!  The Tortuga Rum Company produces more than 5,000 gourmet rum cakes each day, hand-glazing each cake with 5 year old premium rum, then vaccuum sealing each cake to preserve freshness.  The cake and coffee combo is a great breakfast treat, housewarming gift or thank you for a special teacher.

With a pretty butterfly theme floating throughout the gift, this basket is great for Mother’s Day or a spring birthday.  The dark wicker basket holds a matching tea set consisting of a butterfly teapot and 2 butterfly mugs, shortbread cookies, 3 varieties of dessert tea, honey tea swirlers and a wildflower honey sachet.  I was put in charge of a thank you gift for my son’s religion teacher – the class all chipped in and wanted to get her something special to thank her for her dedication.  Since we knew she enjoyed tea, but didn’t know much more about her, we thought this gift would be personal but not intrusive.  We purchased the basket from Holiday Gifts & Gift Baskets for $95 and paid $15.95 for delivery.

Perfect for your Admin Professional, or as a gift for the entire office, this Coffee Break Basket contains some unique gourmet treats and a beautiful coffee mug for them to keep!  My favorite snack in this basket is the Italian Chocolate Espresso Cake, but there’s a number of goodies to choose from – including Dolcetti Chocolate Wafer Rolls, Latte Candy, Cafe Mocha & Chocolate Popcorn (a delicious taste combination), Brent & Sam’s Gourmet Cookies, 2 hot chocolate packets and a bag of Mocha Java Coffee.  The elegantly designed basket is tied with a mocha-colored ribbon, and can be delivered for $63 plus $11.95 shipping.

My neighbors across the street have a large, wraparound deck with excellent exposure to the afternoon sun!  Since the weather has gotten warmer I have seen them on their deck more and more often, enjoying a relaxing cup of coffee.  Watching my neighbors take a midday break makes me think of tea time – what a wonderful idea!  Life can certainly get hectic, and many times it will catch up with me in the afternoon when I’m rushing to complete my projects for the day, thinking ahead to what to make for dinner and wondering what errands we have to run that evening with the kids.  A steaming cup of tea gives me a quick break and helps gather my thoughts to finish the day.

A great way to celebrate tea time is this colorful gift basket – complete with a painted ceramic mug, tea bags, snack mix, candy and cookies.  The basket is a great gift for Admin Professional’s Day, Mother’s Day or for no reason at all!  The set sells for $45 and arrives wrapped in cellophane and tied with colorful curling ribbons.

One of my co-workers loves tea, and she especially enjoys trying new flavors.  Which is why this Around the World sampler was perfect for her birthday last week.  I have to admit that I’m not a tea person so I wasn’t aware that tea came in anything other than a bag!  But when these teas arrived in loose-leaf form my co-worker was thrilled!  She claims that the flavor is much stronger in a loose-leaf tea, and she can mix the flavors together if she is feeling adventurous.  The sampler pack included teas from China, Japan, France and Kenya, but was shipped from Chelmsford Tea & Gifts in Kansas.  She received 2 oz of tea in four flavors:

• Sencha Kyoto Cherry Rose
• Lavender
• Kambaa
• Japanese Sencha

My cousin Bridgette is a graduate student and she has midterms coming up.  Besides being a full time student she also works a full time job and like many of her classmates, she doesn’t get much sleep during the week of midterms.  Bridgette and I are very close so I have decided to send her a little help for her late night study sessions.  This coffee-themed gift basket has a tasty mix of coffee and chocolates, so the caffeine should keep her eyes open long enough to ace her exams!  I ordered this for $52 plus $10.95 shipping from one of my favorite online retailers.

The wicker basket is shaped like a coffee cup and is filled with the following treats:

• Dark & White Chocolate Espresso Beans
• Milk Chocolate Cappuccino Bar
• Espresso Shortbread Cookies
• Hazelnut Coffee Jelly
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Jamocha Almond Fudge Coffee
• French Vanilla Coffee

Morning is always a busy time at our house.  The kids need to get to school and daycare, my husband and I have to get to work, the dog needs to go out, the garbage/recycling has to be taken to the curb – all of this before 8am!  To help get him moving in the morning, my husband has found this ingenious invention – coffee packets to go!  Java Juice Extract is a packet of gourmet coffee concentrate that is available in a variety of flavors.  The packet is simply added to a cup of hot water to create gourmet coffee at a fraction of the price of a stop at the local coffee shop.  Since I don’t drink coffee and my husband only wants one cup in the morning we feel it is a waste to make an entire pot.  Plus, my husband can toss a packet in his lunchbox and make himself coffee for lunch without paying for it at work.

For about a dollar a packet, my husband gets his favorite coffee flavor (Hazelnut) and can save some money at the same time.  An 80-count box of the organic coffee concentrate sells for $90.99 and will last about 2 months in our household.  Compared to a daily stop at the coffee shop, we are saving more than $100 a month – which is a great boost to our “cutting back” New Year’s resolution.  If you want to try this before buying a large quantity, 5 bags are available for only $5.99.

One of the most sought-after coffee flavors is the rare Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.  Adored by coffee enthusiasts worldwide, this elite bean can only be sold by certified Jamaican Blue Mountain distributors.  One of these distributors is Specialty Java.  Over the years, this company has been able to establish wholesale connections with gourmet coffee growers in more than 20 countries.

A glance at their product listing shows an impressive array of flavors – from a light and crisp Kenyan bean to a dark, smoky Organic French Roast.  Specialty Java also offers shipping discounts to a number of midwestern states, and guarantees you will love their product or they will give you a full product refund.  If you are searching for an intense coffee experience, look no further!

My former boss was a tea fanatic!  She wasn’t English, but she still believed in tea time every afternoon.  We had a stockpile of tea packets in the breakroom, and she was always recommending some type of tea for whatever our mood was – whether we were stressed, tired, sick or just having a bad day.  She believed in the healing properties of tea, but I think it was more the soothing afternoon routine that calmed her mood.

I wish I would have found this English Tea Sampler when I still worked with her.  This teacup-shaped basket, filled with 126 assorted teabags would have been the perfect gift!  The price is right at $50, and ground shipping is only $8.95.