A Guide to Gift-Giving for Long-Distance Givers

For the past few years, I've been editing and reposting this as the holiday season starts.  Here goes!

I live far away from much of my family, as does my wife and many of our friends (here in LA, most of us are transplants from elsewhere in the country).   Every January, as the holidays wind down, I hear lots of stories about gift-giving gone awry due to the great distance between gifter and giftee.  Of course, the gifts are given with generosity of spirit and magnanimity of soul, but despite the best intentions, the process of giving and receiving can often cause stress and duress.  I hope that I can mitigate some of that stress by compiling a small collection of guidelines for long-distance gift-giving.  Follow these guidelines, and the gift-giving-and-receiving process will be more focused on the spirit of the season and less on the stress of commerce and retail.

• If the recipient will be flying, avoid giving large gifts.  No microwaves, no cases of wine, no bulky sports equipment.  If you want to give something that’s sizable, consider giving them a photograph to open in person. Then, ship the gift to wherever they live. 
• Unless you are absolutely sure of the recipient’s taste and size, make sure you give gifts that the recipient can return in THEIR hometown, not yours.  National chains (Macy’s, Target, etc.) allow you to buy at one store and return at another.  Or, perhaps there are local boutiques in your recipient’s hometown that you can shop via the internet?
• Even if the recipient is visiting you, restrain from buying from local boutique in your hometown. If the gift doesn’t work out, your recipient will need to spend time during their visit returning the gifts instead of spending time with you.
• Are you shipping a gift?  Confirm the shipping address with the recipient.  Many people have different addresses for receiving letters and packages, and if you send packages to a mailbox, they can often end up disappearing.
• Are you buying for children (grandkids, neices, nephews, etc.)?  Avoid the desire to buy every cute outfit and stuffed animal you see, and instead, focus on gifts that are meaningful.  Ask the child’s parents for great gift ideas.  Says pal Lael Logan:  “Many of us are trying to give our kids the joy and excitement of presents while also balancing it with teaching the "true" meaning of this time. Perhaps you could take the kids on a special holiday outing instead - to see Santa, or ride a train - creating traditions and memories is how we'd like to teach our kids about this season.”
• Can’t think of a good gift for someone?  Consider making a donation.  It’s a terrific way to give something with meaning for more than just your recipient, and it’s very convenient for weary travelers.  Says friend Katherine Resch: “We're doing that for the adults on my side of the family this year, and we're having a lot of fun choosing a charity that will be personal to each family unit.”
• Don’t give crap.  Are you sending your loved one a candy-cane filled with M&Ms?  A bobblehead Santa?  If so, consider just abandoning the gift altogether.  Maybe just send a card, or a gift certificate, which brings me to my last guideline:
• Gift cards, gift certificates, and cash are always welcome, though they’re admittedly impersonal.  You can make them less impersonal by buying a gift card for a specific store that’s local to the recipient.  Was there a boutique that you discovered the last time you visited your sister?  Buy her a gift card for that place, and when she calls to thank you for the gift, you can have a nice time remembering your trip.  See!  Much nicer than a boring sweater from Macy’s.

These guidelines are assembled from my experiences as a long-distance giver and receiver, and those of my friends.  If you’ve got any additional guidelines, feel free to post them to the bottom of this note, and next year, when I repost, I’ll try to include some of them!

Bitters: bottled and ready

At long last, the two batches of bitters are done a bottled! Tonight, after getting home, I did a final skim & strain of the bitters (leaving some of the heavy ashy solids behind). Then, I funneled the bitters into some bottles that I bought and washed. I ran off quick labels and snapped this photo before I called it a night.

While I was pouring, I was also smelling and doing a little tasting. Here are some initial thoughts:

The Coffee Pecan is nice. Thick and opaque in color, round in flavor. Heavier on the coffee than the pecans, but not overly so.  I suspect I'll add more pecans next time (or toast them more lightly than I did this time).  The Charred Cedar is very clear - it looks just like regular bourbon, but it has a very strong nose.  Much less 'charred' than 'cedar.'  I haven't tasted it yet. I guess I'll need to do that soon...

Bitters: strain and boil

After two weeks of daily shakings, it was time to open the jars of bitters. With each jar, the process was the same: strain the solids out of the liquid, add the solids to a pan of water, and boil.  The pots are cooling now, and when they cool completely, I'll put them in two more jars for a week of sitting and filtering.

The charred cedar jar smelled more like cedar than char when I opened it today, and while I was filtering it, the cheesecloth grew black and gunky with the ash from the char. I suspect that when I finish this process and get rid of the wood, the charred aroma will take primacy over the cedar.

The coffee pecan bitters smell amazing!  More like coffee than pecans, actually.  I suspect that is because coffee has more of a natural aroma than pecans, but once I throw the solids away and am just smelling whatever has seeped into the whiskey, the aromas will balance out.

Chop de Wood

My precaution got the better of me tonight when I got home from work, and I pulled out the long pieces of charred wood and chopped them smaller.  It didn't seem to make a difference in terms of how much wood was covered by whiskey, but at least it made me feel better.

After reviewing the recipe, I'm confused at how it's all supposed to go together. That much charred wood, plus other dried herbs, only covered in two cups of bourbon? Seems highly unlikely.

This is my skeptical face.

Then again, I tripled the amount of whiskey and still only cover half of the wood.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Bitters: a side project

I like cocktails. Whiskey drinks, mostly. Bourbons, ryes.  Manhattans, Old Fashioneds. Sazeracs.  Knowing my affection for booze concoctions, S gave me a book on bitters for my birthday. The book is divided into three sections: part I is a history of the bitters, a discussion of the social impact of bitters, and a survey of the more significant bitters, both historically and current.  Part III is a collection of recipes for cocktails and foodstuffs that can be made (or enhanced) with bitters.  The middle section of the book contains some discussion of barware, equipment, and a number of recipes for bitters themselves. There are perhaps a half-dozen recipes, each with a complex list of unusual ingredients (cassia? wild cherry bark?) and an alchemical creation process (store in dark place. shake daily. repeat for two weeks. filter. boil.).

Over the past few days, I’ve motored around LA collecting the ingredients and materials needed to make a couple of these recipes. I also cut and dried some orange peels (they're downstage center in the photo).  Here’s everything, nicely laid out and ready to get made:

Bet you can't identify everything!

I chose two recipes to start with: Charred Cedar Bitters and Coffee and Pecan Bitters.  The basic process to make each is basically the same: combine ingredients and booze, let sit, shake daily, filter, boil, refilter, skim. Today, we combine ingredients.

The Book

I ran into some trouble yesterday when the shop I went to for herbs didn't have wild cherry bark. This was the second shop I tried, so I punted and thought I'd combine a few different herbs as a substitution.

This morning, I got up early to fire up the grill and char the cedar planks. Once those were cooled, I scraped off the ash and broke them into pieces. Into the jars went spices, herbs, peels, wood, beans, nibs, and nuts. Then, the bourbon!  You need to add a high-proof bourbon so that it can soak up the flavor without losing too much potency.

Here are the jars, ready to go:

So, moving forward, I have two concerns.  The first is that the cedar chips are not fully immersed in the whiskey.  In fact, I've had to triple the suggested amount of whiskey in the cedar chips jar, and there's still a lot of wood sticking up. I may go back after a few days and cut the wood smaller so that it can be fully immersed in the boozy boozy goodness.  The second is whether the bitters will be useful without the wild cherry bark (my guess is it will).  Stay tuned!