Do you like receiving food as a Christmas gift?

Sure, I’d take it. I love getting stuff like that. :)

Homemade? Yes. Stuff from catalog? Yes.

Oh, yay Christmas food! I love it all…homemade, catalogs, whatever. Every year my neighbor has a party where she and her friends make a bunch of treats, trade, and then dole them out in their neighborhoods. I think the plate she gives me is my fave, all different sorts of stuff. I guess I’m just a Christmas treat whore. There. I’ve said it!

@marinelife I’m glad you asked this. Every year we put together a basket of stuff for my mother and stepfather. It’s all kinds of stuff we pick up over the last few months. Some quick things to throw together when they don’t feel like fixing a big meal, some chili mixes, soups, jelly or jams, all kinds of things like that. The first year I wasn’t sure they liked it. I’ll be watching for the answers.

No!

I love cookies :)
When someone takes the time to make somethng for me,it is always appreciated.
I really like chocolate chip

Who is sending me this?

First of all, is fruitcake considered food?

Yes! I do like food gifts. One of my very favorite, wasn’t for Christmas, it was for my birthday. My niece made me a beautiful, home-made apple pie. I thought it was a very unusual, creative idea. I can’t remember anything else I got that year, but the pie will always stand out.
I do really do enjoy home-made, especially if there is a story behind it. My mother-in-law passed away a few years ago, she used to make sausage rolls w/English mustard every year for Christmas. We all missed them, so my teen-aged daughter took over. Mom gave us the recipe years ago, but when she passed away, my daughter took over the tradition, and made them for everyone which was much appreciated.

Oh, definitely. I think food is one of the best presents because it’s more likely to be enjoyed than anything else I can think of.

@Kayak8 Seriously, what is everyone’s beef with fruitcake? How did it become such a universal joke? It’s freaking cake with preserved fruit in it, maybe with some marzipan on the outside… It’s hardly the fecal matter that everyone treats it as. I love fruitcake!

I enjoy getting homemade goods and the catalog stuff. Food is always good!

@nicobanks I don’t have a beef with fruitcake. Particularly if the chosen item is a Texas fruitcake and comes from Collin Street Bakery. I grew up eating the stuff. I actually had to explain to my mother that everyone else doesn’t appreciate fruitcake—I brought her a sample of what passes for fruitcake from a lesser purveyor and she understood why there was concern.

I’ve seen fruitcake that is only suitable for a doorstop.

I don’t eat sugar but always appreciate the thought behind a sweet gift and it’s easy enough to find someone who’ll enjoy it. My best food gift ever was a smoked turkey from a local farm. I still dream about that turkey.

Here is what I truly want to try. Thinking about ordering one and sharing it with Mom who is also curious having seen it on Oprah.

Cookies!

that’s about it.

We have one (same one) of these (Italian fruitcake) that makes it way iinto someone’s gift pile each year. My brother started the tradition and he called her “Fing”. He worked with an Italian lady who often used the phrase “I gotta go-a home anda make-a some supp”. She also said, “I can-na do-a that because I-a hurt-a my fing”. Fing= finger.

I’ll take any and all of it, except the fruitcake. My mom gives us her sugar cookies, rum balls and ying lings (crunchy Chow Mein noodles mixed with peanuts then coated with melted butterscotch chips….yum!) every year. Sometimes we get cheese, crackers and sausage or other snacks we all love.

Money is very tight this time of year, so we welcome the food!

@Adirondackwannabe I think that gift basket sounds wonderful and very thoughtful. I bet they love it.

@Kayak8 Yes, it is. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a good fruitcake. I had a male friend that used to make fruitcakes for everyone each year. They were delicious. BTW, the pot pie sounds delicious!

@jonsblond I hear you!

I make fabulous fruitcakes! Just sayin’

@marinelife It’s got so they dig right in to see what’s there, but the first year it was like “we can’t buy our own food” kind of response.

@Adirondackwannabe Sure, who hasn’t, but haven’t you also tasted chocolate, ice cream, and any number of other goodies that are of such poor quality they’re better in the garbage than the mouth? Yet chocolate hasn’t become a universal joke…

One of the great joys of food gifts is that I already have way too much stuff, and the food gift can be enjoyed, then I don’t have to find a place for it my house.
@nicobanks : Most cheap commercial fruitcakes are better served as building materials, unfortunately that’s what most people have had….

@Jude @jonsblond OK, I just have visions of Fing’s Ying Lings . . . and I am cracking myself up over here!

I’m not fond of sweet, sugary stuff, and most food gifts tend to be sweet and sugary, so no, not really. Unless it’s a really big jar of marinated Kalamata olives.

@downtide I am sooo with you on the olives!

@JilltheTooth So are most cheap commercial chocolates…
@downtide I’d go for nicoise olives instead – have you ever had any? Kalamata is okay but oh my God are nicoise olives ever amazing!

If I don’t have to make it, absolutely! If I don’t care for it, someone in my family will like it..that’s almost a guarantee.

@Jude – My mom just got her apple from me. I get her one every year. It’s a favorite on her list. Funny, she never shares!

Yes as long as it’s something people know I’ll eat.

BTW I’ll give all orphan fruitcakes a home.

Not really.

Only real food. I don’t like those canned, process cheese and fake sausage packages.

I think food is just about my favorite thing to receive. Especially holiday food, because I don’t eat it except for once a year. My favorite thing from a mail order catalogue would be cheese or fudge or fancy nuts. This cheddar cheese spread in a crock from The Wisconsin Cheeseman makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

Anything home made is divine: cookies, pumpkin bread, gingerbread, fudge other kinds of candy.

My Grandma used to always send a gift package from either Swiss Colony or Hickory Farms every year for Xmas when I was little. I LOVED it.

I like getting food. Cheese, Chocolates…
I really don’t need any more “things”. If I want something, I can buy it.

My mom always sends us a big jug of chex party mix this time of year. I know we can get that almost anywhere but the fact she made it is special.

A story of sorts:

Every year, for some reason, we got the The Swiss Colony catalog by mail in the household I grew up in. We couldn’t afford any of it, but it was just as much a wish book as the Sears Christmas Toy Catalog, so I salivated over it every December. Cheeses! Sausages! Cakes! Chocolates! It all looked so delicious!

As an adult, I actually got a package of foodstuff from there as a present one year, and it hammered home the importance of being able to read and reckon weights and sizes. The pictures in the the catalog makes the food out to be these great big hunks of sausage and cheese and biscuits and so on, while the reality is that a 5 year old could probably polish off the contents of a $30 box in one sitting and not be the least bit full. Once one read the descriptions, then one realized the pictures were, shall we say, enhanced. :/

Shit yeah! Most “gift” foods are things like cookies, candy, cheese, or cured meats. Everyone loves that stuff. But I’d rather get wine.

Oh yes i do.

Gourmet chocolate, yes.

@mattbrowne Alright! I’m with you! Chocolate is good! Our company sent our office a box of shelled nuts. I put it on my coworkers desk with a note that says, “Let me know the minute this turns into chocolate!”