Choose from a wide variety of books, including
My Life In France by Julia Child.

BookSwim may be your answer. With a Netflix-like subscription to the online book rental program, you can create a pool of books to read from an extensive catalogue, and then have the books shipped straight to your door. When you’re finished enjoying the books, you just ship them back in a pre-paid envelope.

BookSwim is giving one lucky Nibble reader a three-month subscription to its three-books-at-a-time plan. Choose books from Cooking, Food & Wine and nonfood categories. Read them yourself or share with a friend.

Approximate retail value: $72.00.

To find out more about the online book rental program, visit BookSwim.com.

• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Best Books For Healthy Eating Gifts Page and click to enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, December 6th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!

The stylish trees come in a variety of types, sizes and colors, including the “Candy Cane” tree, this week’s prize. And it‘s not just for Christmas: Put blue ornaments on the tree and can use it again for an Independence Day party.

The winner will receive a seven-foot-tall candy cane-colored tree and will enjoy this “sustainable” Christmas tree for many years to come.

Approximate Retail Value: $399.00

To see other designs, visit Treetopia.com.

• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gourmet Cookies, Cakes & Desserts Gift Ideas Page and click to enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, December 6th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!

A 7-foot-tall tree will be delivered right to your door! Photo courtesy Treetopia.

Start the event with a two glasses of
water. Photo by Fred Redhat | Dreamstime.

An article in a medical journal, recently reported by The New York Times, scientifically confirmed the efficacy of an old dieting trick:

Water drunk before meals helps to aid in weight loss, by filling the stomach so one is more full than ravenous.

Use this trick to minimize over-indulging on tempting food and drink this holiday season.

The first thing to do when you cross the threshold of a party, bar or restaurant is to imbibe two glasses of water: tap water, mineral water or club soda. (While not part of the study, we opine that you can substitute diet soda, iced tea/iced coffee or hot tea/coffee.)

If plain water doesn’t float your boat, go for flavored club soda or add a squeeze of lemon or lime, or a good shake of aromatic bitters, which aren’t bitter but add nice flavor and aroma. Angostura bitters, available in most supermarkets and liquor stores, have a nice ginger flavor; the company also makes orange bitters.

Club soda with bitters (lots of them!) are our favorite no-calorie mocktail. The four-ounce bottles of bitters are small enough to carry in a purse or pocket, so you can BYO.

The other benefit to starting a celebration with two glasses of water: It hydrates you to counter the dehydrating effect of alcohol.

Brown and white sugar cubes are decorated with charming gingerbread men, Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer, candy canes and snowmen. The same decoration is available in all-white sugar cubes.

The decorative sugar cubes are sold in an 18-piece gift box ($21.99), a 36-piece gift box ($39.99) and 100-piece gift box ($97.99) at SugarCubes.ca.

If you want to make this your “signature gift” this holiday, you can save by buying the 100-piece gift box and break it down into smaller gift boxes.

Beautiful sugar cubes for entertaining
and for gifts. Photo courtesy Home Sweet Home.

• See all the types of sugar in our Sugar Glossary.
• See more of our favorite gourmet gifts for Holiday 2010.
• See all 13 holiday gift lists—Books, Diet, Kids, Kitchen, Kosher, Stocking Stuffers & more.

Classic French toast. Photo courtesy
MackenzieLtd.com.

This eggy fried bread, with or without maple syrup, can be served for breakfast, brunch or lunch. It is usually made with plain white bread, but can be even more enjoyable when made with brioche, challah, cinnamon swirl bread, French bread or raisin bread.

As with waffles, French toast can be elevated to a dessert by topping it with ice cream and dessert sauce. It also can be baked in the oven, casserole style, for a bread pudding-type dessert.

FRENCH TOAST RECIPE

2. Soak slices of bread 30 seconds on each side in the mixture.

3. Fry in butter on both sides. Additionally, you can caramelize the toast with extra butter and sugar in a hot pan.

4. Serve immediately with maple syrup. For a special experience, serve with an infused maple syrup from Moosewood Hollow, like Sweet Autumn (a blend of sweet spices and vanilla), Sweet Chai, Sweet Ginger or Sweet Heat.

5. Garnish with fresh berries or sliced bananas and enjoy with a tall glass of milk.

• Read the history of French toast, which includes the recipe for a Monte Cristo sandwich—chicken and melted cheese in-between slices of French toast.
• Read our review Moosewood Hollow maple syrups, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.