Instead of using a conventional ice bucket or Rapid Ice to keep bottles chilled at the table, you can earn oohs and aahs with a cooler made of molded ice.

Ice coolers can be used plain (just pour water in the mold and freeze). But part of the fun is creating your own custom design. Add fruits, flowers, leaves, holiday ornaments or other thematic decor.

The ice cooler can be used to keep vodka, mineral water and other beverages cold.

• Check out the Exaco Ice Chiller. It comes gift-boxed for your favorite party hosts.

Create elegant ice coolers for special
events. Photo courtesy Exaco.

With matcha tea, it is easy being green (photo © l’’Âge de Thé)

Matcha is a powder of finely ground green tea leaves. It has a vibrant green color due to the high concentration of chlorophyll and contains ten times as many antioxidants as regular green tea. Matcha is the tea used in the acclaimed Japanese tea ceremony, cha no yu.

Matcha powder is not steeped the way tea leaves are, but is whisked into a froth. Some think the beverage resembles warm tea ice cream.

Matcha is also used to flavor other foods, from smoothies and baked goods (cupcakes, tea cakes) to pots de creme.

• Get the recipe for green tea latte.
• Find out more about tea in our Gourmet Tea Section.

Using thin-sliced whole wheat bread, build your favorite sandwich. Center the ingredients away from the edges so that you don’t waste much when cutting the shape. Then use jumbo cookie cutters—flowers, hearts, gingerbread men, stars or any theme—to cut out sandwiches.

If you’re using salad fillings (egg, tuna, etc.), cut the bread and lettuce first, then add the fillings—or else they’ll squirt out when the sandwich is cut.

For an added touch, garnish the top of the sandwich with a pickle slice or other pickled vegetable (we love the pickled smoked okra from Rick’s Picks), or an olive.

Serve a ham sandwich that looks like a hog
with this pig cookie cutter. Photo courtesy
Old River Road.

You can print out or email a cheese gift
certificate at any time on Father’s Day.
Photo courtesy ArtisanalCheese.com.

Here’s a great solution from Artisanal Cheese, one of the country’s finest cheese purveyors:

A gift certificate!

All you have to do is print it out online and hand it to Dad (BYO envelope, gift box or a ribbon to tie a “scroll”).

Artisanal’s Cheese Gift Certificates can be used towards the purchase of cheese, a cheese gift basket, cheese accessories (books, cutting boards and knives, for example) and Artisanal’s superb cheesecake.

• Get your gift certificate (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to print out—or select the email option).
• Find cheese reviews, recipes and an entire wheel of cheese education in THE NIBBLE’s Gourmet Cheese Section.

Vodka martinis overtook the original gin martini back in the 1990s. The trend was started by Bond, James Bond, who liked vodka martinis shaken, not stirred (and he picked that tip up from the writer Somerset Maugham).
 
But new artisan gins are providing a reason to return to the original.

Vodka is a simple, unflavored distillation. Gin is the opposite—so many different aromatics go into creating a fine gin, that each brand is very different from the next (see the components of gin).

With very complex flavors—as much as any fine wine—fine gin, like fine Scotch, is delicious straight up.

It also makes a better Martini. For Father’s Day, we’re trying a new small-batch gin, G’Vine. The word is a contraction of gin and the French word vigne, grapevine—for this gin is made in France from grapes instead of juniper berries.

Make artisan gin part of your weekend celebration. Even if you’re not celebrating with your father, you can toast in his honor.

Learn more about gin and find martini recipes:

• Bluecoat American Dry Gin, a delight that’s distilled in Philadelphia
• Martin Miller’s Gin, a special distillation from the U.K.
• The Organic Spirits Company makes organic gin

A Gibson is a martini garnished with cocktail onions instead of olives or lemon peel (photo © Philip Pellat | iStock Photo).

• Classic gin recipes: Gimlet, Gin Fizz, Gin & Tonic, plus adaptations like a Gin Mojito and a Bloody Snapper (the Bloody Mary made with gin instead of vodka)