Serve a variety of Marys at your holiday
party with a different garnish for each:
scallions, celery, fennel or carrots. Photo by
S. Mario | Fotolia.

• The Bloody Bull, with beef bouillon
• The Blood Mariner, with clam juice
• The Danish Mary, with aquavit instead of vodka, plus dill
• The Highland Mary, with Scotch
• The Russian Mary, with yogurt

In addition to being highly popular, the red color is seasonal, along with the green garnishes of celery stalks and rosemary sprigs.

Learn the history of the Bloody Mary.

Check out our wealth of Bloody Mary recipes.

Almost anyone would welcome a box of artisan chocolates. They’d be thrilled to get something fabulous from a chocolatier they’ve never heard of, whom you’ve hunted down.

So hunt down something on our list of favorite chocolatiers of the year:

• Antoine Amrani Chocolates, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week from suburban Philadelphia, makes chocolates that look as festive as Christmas ornaments.
• Bespoke Chocolates, another Top Pick, is a tiny New York City chocolatier with connoisseur pieces. The special Christmas piece is a Snowball Truffle: a sparkling, creamy white chocolate truffle flecked with bits of peppermint inside and out.
• Charles Chocolates, located outside San Francisco, packs a selection of chocolate bonbons into an edible chocolate box. You can’t beat that!
• Chocoat Céleste, from St. Paul, Minnesota, has a beautiful box of pink-themed designer chocolates.

Yes, Virginia, there is chocolate sushi. Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

• Chocolat Moderne, another Top Pick from New York City, has holiday-designed and flavored chocolates in almond marzipan, Chinese five-spice caramel, dark fig and port ganache and white saffron ganache.
• Theo Chocolate, from Seattle, has a holiday-flavored collection that’s organic and Fair Trade Certified.
• Dean’s Sweets, from Portland, Maine, has bonbons filled with stout-flavored ganache for beer lovers, and a spicy ganache set that we adored.
• Romanico’s, from Miami, makes chocolate sushi (with puffed rice and dried fruit) that looks like the real thing.
• Spice Rack Chocolates, from Fredericksburg, Virginia, are solid chocolates beautifully flavored (lemon and basil, smoked sea salt, key lime and curry, rosemary and mint, cayenne), without the calories and cholesterol of ganache-filled bonbons.

Check out our list of gourmet chocolate gifts.

We’re stuck on these magnetized, nesting
cups and measuring spoons from Pyrex.
Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

To make it a more important gift, package it with the food it’s meant to help—e.g., the garlic peeler with imported French garlic or a silicone barbecue brush with gourmet barbecue sauce.

• Check out our Kitchen Gifts Under $35 gift list, which includes our two favorite gadgets of this year, Pyrex’s magnetized measuring cups and spoons ($4.99 and $7.99).
• We also love the slightly pricier but totally wonderful Sharpshooter Salt & Pepper Mill from William Bounds. Just pick it up and point, and pepper or salt grinds onto your food—no turning, no buttons.
• The WOW Microwave Bacon Cooker ($19.95) drains the fat and eliminates the pervasive odor of bacon.

See more of our favorite gadgets in the Home Zone section of THE NIBBLE.

• How about a gift certificate to MojaMix, where recipients can custom-blend the organic breakfast cereal of their dreams?
• 479° Popcorn (that’s the temperature at which popcorn pops) has fab flavors already popped, or kits to pop your own, including a can of organic sunflower oil from Top Pick La Tourangelle Oil. We like the snappy gift boxes, too.
• People who want to go green as well as schlep less will love the Pure Seltzer & Soda Maker from Soda Stream. You carbonate all of your own beverages at home in the permanent bottles provided. No waste, no recycling, no schlepping. And the natural flavors, quite frankly, taste better than store-bought. We adore ours.

See all of our green & organic gifts.

Visit our NutriNibbles section for all of our organic product reviews and our organic terms glossary.

The organic Ginger Sesame Caramel Popcorn
from 479° Popcorn rocks. Photo by Hannah
Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.

Celebrate today with a hot cup of cocoa.
Photo by Patterson Minx | IST.

You can buy rimmers just for cocoa, but cocktail rimmers for chocolate martinis, espresso martinis, peppermintinis and orange blossoms are essentially the same product.

Or, make your own rimmer by grinding bittersweet chocolate bars or coffee, butterscotch hard and peppermint hard candies (or candy canes) to a fine gravel. You can mix ingredients or offer them as separate flavors.

Then, just moisten the rim of the cup or mug with water, dip it onto a plate of rimmer powder to coat, add the hot cocoa and serve. Yes, you certainly can top it with whipped cream!

• Read our article on how to prepare hot cocoa—we assume you’re not serving an instant mix.