Are you done with your holiday shopping?  If you, like me, have some hard-to-shop-for friends and family, I offer the following gift suggestions:

• Hogshead cheese shaped like a Christmas tree!  Yes, it’s holiday shaped hogshead cheese, handmade by the nice folks at Wayne Jacobs Smokehouse in Laplace.  No, I don’t have a picture, but the small, party-sized gelees cost less than $5.  Truly, a gift for the person who has everything.  Note:  probably not well suited as a stocking stuffer.
• How to Be a Breadhead:  A Beginner’s Guide to Baking, by Fr. Dominic Garramone.  This little spiral-bound baking instruction manual is simple enough for older kids, but provides enough detail for curious adults.  A bonus–it’s written by a priest, so your ultra-Catholic cousin/neighbor/coworker might like it a bit more than usual.  Complete with lots of black and white photos, the book is organized around three master recipes, with variations and detailed shaping instructions.
• Madame Begue’s Recipes of Old New Orleans Creole Cookery, recently updated by Poppy Tooker.  The perfect book for a cookbook collector with local interests, it’s a reprint of the 1937 edition of a cookbook originally printed in 1900.  Madame Begue, an early and much celebrated New Orleans chef, ‘invented’ brunch, and Tooker has updated some of the classic creole recipes for modern cooks.
• Reprints of vintage WPA food posters, available at the Historic New Orleans Collection’s online shop.  “Your Meat is Going to War” is pictured above.
• Citrus trees, especially Owari satsuma, blood orange, and Improved Meyer lemon varieties.  Almost anyone who lives in a detached house has sufficient yard room for a citrus tree, and the three mentioned varieties produce well in coastal Louisiana.  Trees are readily available from Banting’s Nursery, Perino’s Garden Center, or other area nurseries.  Container-grown citrus can be planted immediately, or kept on a sunny patio until late January or early February.