It’s easy to pull together a Cinco de Mayo celebration with prepared food (just open the bottles).

Our favorite easy entertaining choice is a salsa bar with a tasting of Mexican beer. Invite friends for a Mexican Happy Hour.

There are so many different types of salsa, from salsa verde made with green tomatillos, to corn and black bean, to fruit flavors such as peach and pineapple.

For the most interesting varieties and best tastes, pick up a selection of favorites at a specialty food store. Don’t forget the tortilla chips!

Try to find our favorite Mexican beer, Negro Modelo. It’s a dark, Münchener (Munich)-style beer: a full-bodied dark lager beer that is a model for other “Bavarian-style” beers.

One last thing: Mexican tunes for background music. Ask friends if they have any to bring.

Celebrate Cinco de Mayo with tortilla soup,
and enter the Gourmet Giveaway. Photo
courtesy Wolfgang Puck.

The Gourmet Giveaway is back, with three gift baskets from Chef Wolfgang Puck.

All you need to do is enter your email address. To enter, go to TheNibbleGourmetMarket.com, scroll down, and click the box right underneath the shopping cart.

The gift basket is filled with Chef Puck’s Signature Tortilla Soup—which we’re going to enjoy again on Cinco de Mayo—plus other gift items from Chef Puck.

The Wolfgang Puck soup line is delicious, certified organic and has several gluten-free choices. You know from the first taste that you’re dealing with top-quality ingredients.

You can purchase the Wolfgang Puck soup line at fine retailers nationwide and online.

We liked the three varieties we tried—Classic Minestrone, Signature Tortilla and Tomato Basil Bisque—so much that we can’t wait to try the rest of the 17 varieties of soups, including Creamy Butternut Squash, French Onion, Old Fashioned Potato, Roasted Red Pepper with Tomato, Thick Hearty Vegetable and Vegetable Barley.

The gluten-free soup varieties include Black Bean, Hearty Lentil Vegetable, Free Range Chicken With White And Wild Rice, Signature Tortilla and Tomato Basil Bisque. See the full list.
  

Still stuck for a special gift idea?

Take a look at these luscious gifts: beautiful chocolates, cakes and, for yoga moms, gingerbread cookies in yoga positions.

 
For a no-calorie delicious gift, try some tea samplers and a glass teapot.

 
All of this is making us hungry. Time for a snack!

While we’ve tried far too many brands of nuts to make that pronouncement, Bobby Sue’s is certainly up there in the Best Hot & Spicy Nuts category.

All three varieties of Bobby Sue’s Nuts are quite nice if you like a dry-roasted style of mixed nuts that are very crunchy.

 
While the products are not organic-certified (an expensive undertaking), the ingredients–including almonds, cashews, pecans, sugar, egg whites and spices, plus water and salt–are all organic.

Think of them for poker and bridge games and as small gifts and stocking stuffers.

A percentage of each sale goes to the local SPCA shelter.

Ours did, and we can still smell and taste each piece that she lovingly sprinkled with her blend of sugar and cinnamon – a blend she premixed and stored in the type of specialty jar also used to sprinkle grated cheese.

Every morning, it was only two shakes from plain buttered toast to festive cinnamon toast. It’s like a streamlined cinnamon bun.

Use your favorite bread. We’d say go for whole wheat bread, but raisin bread, multigrain, challah and of course, plain white bread work equally well.

1. Mix 2 tablespoons of white sugar with 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
2. Toast the bread, lightly butter it and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.

This comfort food is a delight at breakfast or brunch, or as a snack with afternoon tea (or milk for the kids). And it has far fewer calories than a breakfast pastry, muffin or piece of cake.