Little did we know when we opened the jar of Kathryn’s Cottage Blue Cheese Dressing that we would fall in love.

We try every blue cheese dressing that crosses our path. Most don’t measure up.

Funny: Kathryn was in the same boat, so she decided to make her own. After much experimentation, she came up with the current masterpiece; then developed a superb Thousand Island Dressing as well.

If you think you don’t need to send away for salad dressing, think again! Or at least twist your retailer’s arm to stock up on them. Read the full review below.

Blue cheese dressing this good should be
shown off in a recipe like this. Photo by
Soulgems | Fotolia.

Perfect with tea (and almost any repast),
we hope that oatcakes will become as
popular as shortbread. Photo courtesy
Effie’s Homemade.

What’s an oatcake, and why should you be interested?

It’s true: “Oatcake” doesn’t sound too beguiling. To Americans, it can sound like something you might give your horse as a treat.

Neigh!

As Scotland is too cold to grow wheat, oats were the staple grain until modern times and easy distribution of wheat products throughout the U.K. In Scotland, biscuits—sweet or savory—were made with oatmeal instead of wheat flour.

So think of a simple but sublime shortbread cookie—essentially wheat flour, butter and sugar. Then substitute oats for the wheat, and you’ve got an oatcake.

While they might not sound as graceful as “shortbread,” oatcakes are just as satisfying—even more so, as they’re not as sweet or buttery. So they go with just about everything, from breakfast to soup and salad to the cheese course.

This week, our Top Pick is a trio of treats. They’re not related to each other but for the fact that they’re all very special and worth seeking out.

Our first product is Tipsy Cocktail Stirrers from Sable & Rosenfeld.

Bloody Marys, martinis and any savory cocktail will be greatly enhanced by dressing up with gourmet cocktail stirrers. So will a sandwich, a burger or anything else that begs for visual excitement and savory splendor. (That makes it a great gift, too.)

Tipsy cocktail stirrers are also a very low calorie snack, and certified kosher by OU.

Why didn’t we think of this? Our new favorite
cocktail garnish. Photo by Katharine Pollak |
THE NIBBLE.

How could it be that we have lived this many decades without the joys of smoked shrimp and scallops?

Smoked fish we’ve had aplenty: black cod (sablefish), chub (carp), salmon, sturgeon, trout, whitefish. But our smoked shellfish experience has been limited to imported cans of smoked mussels and clams. We employed them in various hors d’oeuvres, dips and dishes and concluded that what we’d bought was the smoked shellfish equivalent of supermarket canned tuna.

Sullivan Harbor Farm does away with those memories, bringing an “I must have more!” allure to smoked shrimp and scallops (and also to smoked salmon). The smoked shrimp and smoked scallops add big personality to recipes, not to mention wowing the cocktail crowd as nibbles in various forms (dips, hors d’oeuvres, canapés or straight from the toothpick). If you love shrimp, scallops and smoked foods, you’ve got to try them!

The products are all natural: no preservatives, chemicals or colorings are used. Made in small batches using old world techniques—including outdoor smokers.

You’ll enjoy all the different ways you can use these smoked tidbits. For lunch we enjoyed them atop Al Dente Pasta’s garlic parsley fettuccine, tossed with some rosemary basil olive oil from Sonoma Farms and a bit of brown butter. Fresh parsley was a light offset to the smoky seafood. A gourmet feast in minutes!

Smoked shrimp and scallops combine into
easy, delicious recipes. Photo by Jerry Deutsch | THE NIBBLE.

Read the full review to see how else we’ve used these smoky protein treats.

Mad Hectic Oatmeal is for people who don’t like a bowl of healthy oatmeal. And it’s for people who love it.

Many people just don’t like plain oatmeal, although they buy into its health benefits. That’s why the best-sellers include the fruit-flavored, sugary instant oatmeals.

Alas, those packets do not contain healthy food. They’re full of sugar, and many of the nutrients have been stripped in the processing.

Mad Hectic Oatmeal provides a solution. Improving on the concept of those instant oatmeals, Mad Hectic Oatmeal is flavored and alluring. But it’s also organic oatmeal mixed with nutritious whey protein powder and flaxseed meal with Omega-3 fatty acids and lignans (which have antioxidants and fiber).

Antioxidant, nutritious and heart-healthy sesame seeds are also added, topped off with whole freeze-dried berries, nuts and some cane sugar. It emerges hot from the microwave in just 60 seconds. That’s fast and tasty oat nutrition for your mad hectic life (and for you folks who have it easy, too).

Mad Hectic Oatmeal is more like hot pudding (think Indian pudding) than hot cereal. With fruit and nut combinations—and chocolate oatmeal—you’ll be feeling your oats soon after (translation: you’ll be energetic and playful).

Strawberry Pecan Oatmeal lets you feel your
oats in a delicious new way. Photo by
Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

Flavors include Almond Pecan, Raspberry Almond, Red Raspberry and Strawberry Pecan plus the very kid-friendly varieties: Chocolate Raspberry and French Chocolate. Read the full review below, including the health benefits of oatmeal, to see why you should make Mad Hectic Oatmeal part of your daily meal plan.

One of the challenges of the food-writing profession is that, to do a really good job of it, you’ve got to taste everything straight off the spoon. Even hot sauce. Otherwise, the flavor of the bread, chicken or other food you’re using as a base gets in the way.

Tasting soy sauce from the spoon was a tough job. We were concerned that our Big Papi En Fuego hot sauce tasting would take out our taste buds for the rest of the day. But Big Papi is such a fine product, that even the XXX-Tra Hot version was enjoyable (very hot, but flavorful).

There’s a lot of small-batch hot sauce out there, made by hot sauce lovers who haven’t been satisfied with what they’ve found on the market. So they gather up the best ingredients starting with fresh chiles (many brands are made with chile extract—just a liquid without any texture or nuance).

One of those hot sauce lovers is the Boston Red Sox slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz. Working with a product development company and the finest chiles, he’s developed a line of Louisiana-style hot sauce that is so flavorful, it’s a pleasure to eat from the spoon. Each is a different chile blend, and even the hottest of the four delivered great taste in addition to heat. We never go for hot salsa—we have a delicate palate. So consider how good these are.

So thick, fruity and luscious: Big Papi hits
this hot sauce out of the park. Photo by
Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

And, they’re calorie free! Made from vinegar, chiles and salt, this is a condiment you can sprinkle onto (and into) anything. Read the full review and heat things up a bit.

As is our tradition, the Top Picks of the last two weeks of the year present the best products we’ve tried during the year—everyday specialty food products that can make every day special.

This week, in Part I of “The Best Of 2009,” we present in alphabetical order our favorite savory foods and beverages.

You can click to the original reviews via the links links below, or read our “Best Gourmet & Specialty Foods of 2009” full review to learn why these have become permanent additions to our home pantry (and to THE NIBBLE kitchen as well).

Stay tuned for Part II, our favorite sweets.

Fusion flavored sea salts put a whole new
spin on fries, roast chicken, salad, Margaritas
or anything sprinkled with salt. We try a
different flavor each time—from hot
Habanero to Aged Balsamic. Photo © Idaho Potato Commission.

In greater Los Angeles, home to Sprinkles Cupcakes,* there is the usual discussion board controversy. You’ll read everything from they’re “the best there is” to “avoid at all costs.” We only know Sprinkles cupcakes from their mixes. We’ve made every one, and we stand firmly with “the best there is” crowd. Maybe your homemade cupcakes are as good, but they can’t be much better.

*The original store is in Beverly Hills. There are outposts in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Newport Beach, Phoenix/Scottsdale and Palo Alto, with 16 additional locations on the boards (see the website).

If you’re looking for a better cupcake than what you can buy…if you’re tired of trying recipes, only to find that they’re not what you were hoping for…we hope that your search, like ours, has come to an end. Your new favorite gourmet cake mix purveyor is Candace Nelson, co-founder (with her husband) of Sprinkles Cupcakes. Some day we’ll get to a Sprinkles bakery; until then, we can only judge the cupcakes made from the mixes as A to A+.

The best cupcakes in town are at your house,
with Sprinkles cupcake mixes. Photo by Victoria Pearson | Sprinkles.

We baked up all seven cupcake mixes: Banana, Dark Chocolate, Lemon, Pumpkin, Red Velvet, Spice and Vanilla. There’s also Chocolate Peppermint which, along with Pumpkin, is a seasonal mix flavor.

Coffee: neat, pressed and hungry for a shot
(of Java & Co. syrup, that is). Photo ©
Elina Manninen | Fotolia.com.

Millions of people in America walk into their favorite coffee emporium and order their java with a shot of syrup. Amaretto, caramel, hazelnut and vanilla are very popular, and it’s high season for egg nog, gingerbread and pumpkin (how did you think those pumpkin lattes are made)? Most coffee houses use Monin (which makes 113 flavors, not all meant for coffee) or Torani (78 flavors, ditto), and you can purchase bottles for home use. But if you’d like to give a gift of something special—small-batch, artisan-made syrups made from roasted coffee beans, including a “decaf”—Java & Co. has a good thing going.

The infused syrups that have so captivated coffee-drinkers are essentially flavored simple syrup (sugar syrup). They have gained visibility with the renaissance of coffee houses, but have been used for many years to make Italian sodas, as breakfast syrups and dessert syrups, and in recipes from glazes to baking. They can make almost any food taste better—but sugar has a way of doing that.

Java & Co.’s handmade and hand-bottled syrups—they’re made and shipped to order for maximum freshness—taste that much better than the mass-manufactured products from Monin and Torani. They begin with actual coffee beans, and are a delightful personal gift, corporate gift and sweet syrup for your own pantry.

Thank goodness the growing demand for sophisticated cookie platters gave birth to Cookie Panache, because the cookies are simply wonderful. In a world where the cost of labor and ingredients to bake one’s own butter cookies is almost as much as buying the finest, Cookie Panache is a real find. Crafting twists on favorites that add layers of flavor, these cookies and their biscotti siblings have most definitely earned their panache.

Cookie Panache answers the ever-hanging question of what to give for personal and corporate holiday gifts, hostess gifts and thank-you gifts for loving relatives who treat you to Thanksgiving, and Christmas and Chanukah memories.*

*Anyone who celebrates anything else: Add it here!

So, what are you waiting for? You know you want to dig in and find out more about the Dulce de Leche Cookie (a super sandwich), Triple Chocolate Bites (worth every calorie), Mojito Lime (a cocktail in a glass), Dutch Granny (we’ve adopted her) and the rest of the melodious cookie chorus, including impeccable biscotti.

Biscotti with panache. Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.