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DEL.ICIO.USHow do you pick a mail-order food gift?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mail-order food companies have been sending packages to the newspaper for weeks now, with samples of their holiday goodies. It’s big business for them. Consumers increased the number of food gifts they bought by almost 50 percent between 2004 and 2006 according to one marketing research firm, with annual sales near $16 billion.
Getting a positive review in the many newspapers, magazines and web sites that offer holiday food guides can boost sales. So we’ve been opening boxes filled with truffles and candied nuts, organic pears and flavored popcorn, and peppermint in many forms, from bonbons to bark. And endless boxes and bars of chocolate.
After a while, many of them start to blur. A lot of them just aren’t worth the calories; they’re made with mediocre ingredients that can’t be disguised even with the most festive holiday wrapping. So it was a refreshing change to try Enstrom Candies’ Peppermint Cookie Bark. (And really, peppermint bark — not something I usually think of as worth indulging in, not like, say, the Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel caramels that colleague John Kessler writes about in his roundup of high-end mail order goodies.)
The Enstrom’s bark was sweet with a hint of salt, made with a combination of dark and white chocolate and chocolate cookie pieces. It’s fabulous candy, pretty to look at with its layers of chocolate and peppermint, and prettily packaged. If you order before Dec. 1, you get free shipping if you enter PRFS as the source/discount code when ordering. At $18.95 for one pound, it’s not the cheapest peppermint bark out there, but it’s the best we’ve tried this year.
Do you send food gifts? What’s your favorite? How do you decide what to send — is it based on what you like to eat?
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By Kat
November 28, 2007 12:26 PM | Link to this
Citrus fruit for our northern relatives! Pittman & Davis has good, fresh products, and the shipping is included in the price. That’s a big deal, because citrus fruit is heavy!