If you haven’t heard of the “vibrant” online handmade marketplace, Etsy, chances are, you’ve been living as a hermit in a cave with no Internet access. But if you’ve never seen the food products offered on Etsy, you’re just not looking hard enough.
Hint: it’s under the “plants and edibles” category menu on the left side of the home page.
As a huge fan of the website for affordable, unique home décor options, I never crossed paths with a handmade fudge or a fresh-baked loaf of country French bread on the site until recently. With a schedule that doesn’t always allow trips to the various farmers’ markets in town for some quality, handmade goods, the Internet is a great resource for making fun, new food discoveries.
Here are five items I’m drooling over for myself (hint, hint Santa Claus), or considering as gifts for my food-loving friends and family. (Note: if some are sold out, there are plenty of other yummy options.)
Other than containing the magical combination of words like pie and fried and chocolate, this pair of goodies will be shipped the same day they’re made to ensure you get what you pay for ($8 plus shipping). The only effort you’ll have to supply to the cause is going out and buying vanilla ice cream to make it a la mode.
Although this pork belly has become the most recent cliché of the food world, nothing can take away the wallop of umami satisfaction a nice, crisp piece of bacon delivers. Whether dipped in dark chocolate, candied or baked into a batch of chocolate chip cookies, half the fun will be opening your package-o-bacon once a month to see what surprises it holds.
This $40 will buy you an entire year of pork-centric anticipation and hopefully, satiation.
They’re fluffy, they’re sweet, they’re homemade in our own backyard, and at $8 plus shipping for a sample of autumn flavors, we’re willing to give them a try. At the Softly Sweetly Etsy shop, you’ll find these little pillowy clouds hailing from Conroe. With specialized flavors like rosewater, egg nog, orange chocolate and snickerdoodle, you’re probably not going to find these in any grocery store aisle.
Sweet & Savory Sampler
If you’re a spreader, of the sauce, preserve or jam sort, you have several options whether you’re craving sugar or salt. For $20 plus shipping, you’ll have a taste of small-batch peach salsa, caramelized onion and roasted garlic jam, blackberry bliss, chimichurri, balsamic fig jam or marmalade.
It certainly beats slaving over a hot stove and canning apparatus — trust me, it’s no less than a three-hour process from beginning to cleaning, and there’s usually a fair amount of sweat involved.
Perhaps it’s my own inadequacy in the kitchen, but making caramels has always filled me with trepidation. Here’s where these creatively flavored, handmade caramels come into play — to fill my teeth full of sticky goodness and quell the sweet tooth that always shows up when the holiday season starts.
I’m a sucker for pumpkin and spices, put them together in a form other than pumpkin pie and I’m even more intrigued. A bit expensive at $6.97 plus shipping for four ounces, but I’m willing to try anything once.
