FiPS Holiday Gift Guide: Foodies-n-Drunks

When it comes to traditions, stuffing your face & drowning your sorrows is not only a holiday tradition, it’s a Park Slope tradition. We here in Park Slope love consumption.

With that in mind, this holiday season we’ve assembled a delectable group of gifts that’ll ensure that the foodies & drunks in your life will shut up about their latest gustatory obsession for a brief moment. Enjoy it while you can, because by the time 2013 rolls around, they won’t be able to shut up about the way you helped feed their obsession this holiday season. Bon Appetit/Salut!

1. Sodastream Source Metal Edition ($149.99, Tarzian West, 194 7th Ave, 718-788-4213) In the great big world of artisanal Brooklyn, anyone who isn't making their own soda is pretty much a jerk. Not a soda jerk though...an ACTUAL jerk. You don't want to associate with ACTUAL jerks, do you? I didn't think so. In short, the easiest way to avoid that fate is to get a Sodastream soda maker for all of the actual jerks in your life. Consider the options! Every time you pay your friends a visit, you'll get to try out their special recipe of Mountain Dew Code Red made with elderberries & basil. Mmm. Long live artisanal soda. 

2. [SPONSORED] Private Custom Cooking Class ($125/hour + ingredients, Purple Kale Kitchenworks) These days, everyone and their mother thinks they're the next reincarnation of Julia Child. Too bad most of them aren't. Sometimes, though, all they need is a lil' loving shove in the right direction. Brooklyn's Purple Kale Kitchenworks offers private, customizable cooking classes right in the comfort of your own home, with an emphasis on excellent ingredients and strong technique. Want to learn how to toss together a meal from whatever's in your fridge? Looking to make delicious meals out of your CSA Box? Need to make entertaining easier? They'll build a class that’s a minimum of three hours long and catered to whatever floats the proverbial boat of that aspiring chef (or chefs) on your holiday list. Classes are for anywhere from one-to-four people (for the same price), meaning you can turn a bunch of your friends into improvisational chefs all at once and you'll never have to endure their crappy cooking ever again. FiPS Holiday Deal: Mention you saw this on FiPS and receive a six-hour package of classes for only $600, a savings of $150!

3. Grow Bottle ($34.95, Lumiere, 238 7th Ave, 718-369-1082) It's a scientific fact that everything's better when hydroponic-grown herbs are involved. Ask any stoner chef.  This year, get the stoner chef in your life the gift that keeps on giving--a Grow Bottle. It's a recycled wine bottle cut up so that, through the wonders of hydroponics, your stoner chef pal can grow basil or mint or parsley or whatever other herbs he can think of right there in his tiny studio apartment. Whatever said pal decides to grow, it'll be totally eco-friendly & totally tasty. 

4. Beer Tasting Tool Kit ($24.95, Loom, 115 7th Ave, 718-789-0061) When it comes to beer, we all have that friend who thinks that a Corona is an adventurous beer. If they only knew why your favorite wet-hopped double I.P.A. was so damn amazing! If only they could see the light! The Beer Tasting Tool Kit, developed by some dude from Portland, has all sorts of info designed to help people learn about what makes one beer different from another. It even comes with a bunch of stuff you can use to pretend you're a professional and conduct your very own beer tasting with your beer snob buddies. 

5. Dunkeld Atholl Brose ($50.00, Shawn Wines & Spirits, 141 7th Ave, 718-622-7947) Remember that scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson was all "BLAH BLAH BLAH freedoms Scottish BLAH BLAH" and then all the Scots showed the British their asses? Pretty damn historical, huh? A few centuries of Scottish history later, the 1st Earl of Atholl put a mixture of oatmeal brose, honey & whisky in the drinking well of a rebel leader, making him easy to capture. Believe me, that shit wouldn't have worked on Mel Gibson. Anyway, with this historical event, a brand new drink called "Atholl Brose" was born. If you pick up a bottle of it for a friend this holiday season, you'll be able to put on your best Groundskeeper Willie accent and tell that same lame story before handing over the hooch.

6. Bierkraft Growler Bag ($14.95, Bierkraft, 191 5th Ave, 718-230-7600) Got a friend who loves draft beer, but hates being around "people" in "bars?" Chances are that they probably own a growler or two, which allows them to fill up on tasty craft beer and abscond back to their abode to get drunk in silence. Believe me, lugging all that beer around ain't easy, especially with that ever expanding beer belly weighing one down. The solution: An insulated bag designed specifically to carry a growler, complete with a shoulder strap and a Bierkraft logo. Drunky will thank you for making getting drunky easier.

MERRY FIPS-MAS!