Amazing how quickly December rolls around. Seems like yesterday we were making our lists and checking them twice. And, just like that, time to do it again. As a gesture of goodwill to my readership, I’ve prepared Deb’s Big List of Do’s and Don’ts for the 2006 Holiday Shopping Spectacular. What to buy - and, more importantly, what not to buy the foodcentric soul in your life.

If you have a serious cook, astute oenophile, or hard core foodie on your holiday shopping list, you’ll want to spend a few minutes here before moving on to other parts of Bitegeist. Follow my advice, and I’m sure you’ll please the most discerning of culinary-minded characters. Don’t - well, don’t and save your receipts. You are very likely damning your gift recipient to an interminable wait in the Returns Department.

First and foremost, let’s address the fail safe of all last minute holiday shoppers - the gift certificate. Who doesn’t love the flexibility of a restaurant gift card? But serious food types - we also love our local chefs. As harried as you may be during this most joyous of seasons, do not buy us gift certificates from chain restaurants. Do treat us to a meal at a local favorite. 

Please, not another bottle of Chardonnay. And, no thanks, we don’t need any more wine charms, those baubles that help party guests keep track of their glasses. Show me a wine afficionado, and I’ll show you a poor sot who has a kitchen drawer burgeoning with these little dandies. The shells, the shoes, the suns and moons, the garden tools, the playing cards, the cowboy boots, the flags of the world, the naughty Playboy bunnies. Buy wine charms, and you are begging to be "regifted." Instead, head over to your local wine shop and prevail upon the staff to help you select a chewy Zinfandel or a pinot gris with enough legs to dance with pesto encrusted salmon. We’ll toast your good taste.

Don’t, no matter how strong the temptation, buy a tin of cookies. No Danish Butter Cookies, no Walker Shortbread, no Pepperidge Farm sampler. Don’t buy a Barbeque King or Mama’s Kitchen apron or a baseball cap that boasts "I’d rather be grilling." Do troll around for some authentic cooking togs - a fresh white chef’s jacket and checkered pants. Or maybe a pair of oh-so-Euro clogs.

Don’t buy pre-packaged food extravaganzas, such as pasta-themed gift baskets or the Tower of Chocolate. Do head to the ethnic markets and fill your basket with exotic ingredients - nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce), kecap manis (Indonesian soy sauce), or dried lily buds (dried lily buds). We’ll figure out what to do with the stuff. Drop into an Indian market and pick up a pound or two of dal or an assortment of pappadam. Buy landjager, a dense flavorful German sausage, from a German butcher, some freshly baked oatmeal cookies from the corner bakery, or a couple of flavors of locally bottled barbeque or hot sauce to stuff our stockings.

Don’t buy anything that comes in a set. No knife blocks, no barbeque tools, no bar sets. Cooks are notoriously picky about their implements. The Ginsu Classic 10-piece knife set will never, ever compare to the complete and utter satisfaction that is to be found in one perfectly forged 8 inch Wusthof chef’s knife. Don’t buy anything that says "Kiss the Cook" - not a pot holder, a magnet, a dishcloth, or a hand painted sign from a craft fair. Do buy vintage menus, rusted tin signs ("Try Coke in Bottles" or "Nehi"), or a fun little box of food-themed magnets or cards. My sister gave me a box of cards featuring food-themed cartoons from the New Yorker - love them. 

Please, no Paul Prudhomme or Frugal Gourmet cooking videos. Send us to the coast for the Jekyll Island Club Hotel’s cooking school. Three nights in the lovely Crane Cottage, patisserie sessions, a wine tasting seminar with the sommelier, a Jekyll Island Club chef’s logo jacket? We want this. We really want this.

Save your $59.99. Don’t buy the Jumbo George Foreman Split Grill. We’ll also pass on the Mickey Mouse waffle iron and the Toastmaster Sandwich Maker. Do buy a mandoline, a spring form pan, or some other manual tool for turning out kitchen wonders. I’d never ask for a hand cranked sausage stuffer, but I’d daresay I’d be pleasantly surprised to receive one.

Don’t buy any culinary tale that has been turned into a movie or a cottage industry. No Under the Tuscan Sun, no Year in Provence. And don’t buy celebrity chef or celebrity’s chef cookbooks. No kicking it up a notch with Emeril, please. No 30-minute meals with Rachael Ray. Look for something a bit more obscure ... say Colette Rossant’s Memories of a Lost Egypt: A Memoir with Recipes or MFK Fisher’s correspondence, A Life in Letters. Food histories are good choices, as well. The Cod’s Tale or Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. Or how about Laura Schenone’s A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances or John Egerton’s Southern Food: At Home, On the Road, in History? Give us something we won’t be embarrassed to read in an airport.

If you want to get really clever, troll around the antique markets and yard sales and see if you can unearth a dated gem. A Jello cookbook from the 1920s (who knew you could do so much with cherry Jello, green peppers, and boiled eggs)? Perhaps an ethnic cookbook from the 1930s or 40s? And if you manage to score somebody’s grandmother’s recipe box? That, my friends, takes the gold medal in Olympic gift giving.

In short, be inventive. We foodies have stocked our pantries and lives with everything that could be considered a necessity. We have all the OXO kitchen tools we need. Yes, even the lemon zester. We have enough flavored teas to host our own Boston Tea Party. And, as hard as it is to believe, we really do have extensive collections of cheese spreaders.

If we’re on your holiday list, step from the beaten path. Think quirky and obscure. Give us an antique rolling pin. Give us heirloom vegetable seeds. Give us Riedel stemware made specifically for sipping sauvignon blanc. Give us something you created in your kitchen. Please, just don’t give us wine charms.