So another holiday season has rolled around, and once again you're left wondering what in Hades you're going to buy for the foodies on your gift list. You've already given them gift cards to Bed, Bath and Beyond, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma and every other vaguely kitchen-oriented store on the planet. You're scared to buy your friend any "important" tools since you heard he climbed a mountain in Japan and spent six months apprenticing for the master swordmaker who made his chef's knife.

In other words, you need my help. And, as ever, I'm happy to be of assistance.

Bake Up A Present

Let's start off this year's cavalcade of goodies with a trio of delectable baked offerings that will add an elegant touch to any meal. At Chef Michael Gagné's Robinhood Free Meetinghouse, diners enjoy his 72-Layer Cream Cheese Biscuits, invented more than three decades ago when the chef was working in Virginia. Over the years, he's added cinnamon rolls and a Five-Herb Parmesan Cream Cheese biscuit to the menu, and now you (lucky stiff) can get them at home.

These are not your ordinary frozen bread products. The biscuits bake up nice and tall, and they will melt in your mouth without the addition of butter. For real decadence, split them and add just a touch of Berry Best Jam from Imladris Farm. The cinnamon rolls are completely decadent, and follow one of the cardinal rules for making a really good version: don't drown it with icing! There is a nice drizzle of vanilla glaze across them, but the real star is the the cinnamon-sugar filling, which balances the sweetness of the sugar with the cinnamon richness beautifully.

If your family, like mine, has a tradition of Christmas morning breakfast being something quick and sweet that Dad or Mom can pop in the oven while the kids attack their presents, the cinnamon rolls are a fantastic idea. They're guaranteed to pull the kids away from their new Wii or whatever other electronic brain-drainer Santa has seen fit to bestow upon them.

My favorite, though, is the Five-Herb Parmesan Cream Cheese biscuit. This little beauty will make even the most humble jarred spaghetti sauce into a gourmet dinner. With most breads of this type, you get a headslap of cheap cheese and maybe a jolt of oregano. These biscuits have everything in proportion, and are stellar eaten by themselves or dunked in a bit of sauce.

You can find the Gagné Foods products at Whole Foods and Wild Oats stores, or click here for a list of online and local vendors who will help you stock your freezer. Order them online and have them shipped directly to your giftee, then wait for the thank-yous!

Fun With Meat

Of course, this wouldn't be the Short Orders Gift Guide if I didn't bring you at least one thing to help spice up your grilling life, would it?

Last year, I had the privilege of visiting Courtney's BBQ, in Clover, S.C. When I walked in the door, the first thing that hit me was the familiar aroma of mesquite wood, well-known to any Texan but highly rare in the Atlantic seaboard states. It turns out that Gene Courtney has it trucked in, and uses it to produce some of the finest barbecue I've ever been privileged to taste.

While his 'cue stands on its own without sauce, as all good barbecue should, he does happen to have two outstanding sauces that he's at long last made available for online order. I had to threaten to steal his recipe and start making it myself!

The first is a "Lexington-style" sauce (named after Lexington, N.C., one of my state's barbecue bastions), that will delight with its sweet flavor that goes with any grilled or barbecued meat and even wakes up things like grilled corn or baked potatoes.

The second, and my favorite, is his mustard sauce. It has just the right mustard tang and a hint of sweetness. You'll find yourself using it on just about anything. I have even used it tossed with pasta with a bit of Black Forest ham and some roasted garlic.

Gene's still working out the whole "shopping cart" thing, but you can e-mail him here and he'll fix you up.

Not Just Any Old Port

If you're traveling to visit friends during the season, don't forget to take a host/hostess gift along. This is a custom that's largely fallen by the wayside in recent years, but the good folks at Calhoun and Co. have introduced me to a wine that could singlehandedly revive the tradition.

You might think of port wine as something for guys in big armchairs holding $80 cigars. Truth to tell, there may be no finer way to finish off a good meal in good company than with a glass of port. Dow, a port house that's been in business since 1798, has a 20-year-old tawny port that is so good, with so many flavor notes and such depth, that you may find yourself skipping dessert in favor of another sample.

Dow port wines make great gifts for yourself, too. After an eight-hour present-wrapping marathon, a glass of port and a comfy couch are a perfect reward. If you're a wine neophyte like me, don't let the exotic history and complex creation of good port intimidate you out of buying your first bottle, either for yourself or as a gift. Once you've tasted Dow's wonderful creations, you'll be hooked for life. I'll confess that I'd tasted only cheap port knockoffs before trying Dow Tawny Port, and now I can't imagine my liquor case ever being without it.

If you want to learn more about port, or about the other outstanding wines from the Symington Family Estates, visit the Premium Port Wines site, where you'll find an education center, a wine finder, recipes, serving tips and much more!

Great Gadget

I tend to shy away from any kitchen gadget recommended by a celebrity. You will not find Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay or Rachael Ray's names on any of my tools. Thus, I've avoided like the plague the George Foreman grills in all their incarnations. However, my love for waffles led to the latest version, the GRP90WGR "Next Grilleration."

As any homemade waffle fan can attest, the one downside to making your own is cleaning the wafflemaker. Even if you have nonstick cooking surfaces, they still end up with an accumulation of grease after a long cooking session. The occasional overflow from a too-enthusiastically filled cooker is also tremendous fun to clean off, especially if you have a sandblaster handy. Among the top-performing waffle cookers, not a single one has removable grates.

The Next Grilleration not only has removable grates, it produces waffles at least as good as any top-notch wafflemaker I've tried. They cook evenly and quickly, and the grill reheats very quickly to keep production moving when you've got a lot of folks to feed. The grates come clean easily with a plastic scrubber, or you can toss them in the dishwasher.

There are other grills included, of course, and you'll find tons of uses for the cooker. Mine has actually earned a permanent spot on my kitchen counter. The "baking" plate is great for quick quesadillas and panini and the grilling plate is my best friend when I need to turn out a few grilled shrimp or have another small grilling job that really doesn't warrant firing up my Weber kettle.

One caveat, though: The grill comes with a cookbook that's got some great recipes ... but don't try the waffle recipe. For one thing, it recommends only ¼ cup of batter per waffle, which won't even fill half the griddle. My personal favorite recipe is the Waffle of Insane Greatness from Aretha Frankenstein's restaurant.

Give one of these to your favorite breakfast chef and then start angling for an invite. It also makes an outstanding gift for kids headed off to college or anyone who will be living anywhere where cooking space is at a premium and time tends to be tight.

Party Time!

If you've got a chilehead or chip lover on your gift list, Kettle Chips has a great new boxed assortment that is a party in the making. Their "Fire and Spice" assortment has five bags of the great Kettle chips in some seriously fire-breathing flavors: Wicked Hot Sauce, Mango Chili, Jalapeño Salsa Fresca, Orange Ginger Wasabi and Death Valley Chipotle.

As you'd expect from Kettle Foods, the chips deliver on their flavor promise. However, the heat levels are balanced beautifully with the other flavors. Even with the hottest one (to my palate), the Death Valley Chipotle, I found myself unable to stop munching even as the sweat started to bead on my forehead. I'm glad the bag wasn't any bigger, or I'd likely be dead of spontaneous human combustion, which would make writing this gift guide problematic at best.

The box includes some nifty tasting guides, suggestions for food and drink to cleanse your palate between tastings and all manner of other goodies. Whether you buy one for your favorite spicy-food aficionado or for your own holiday (can you say Super Bowl?) party, you won't be disappointed.

Oh, and since these are Kettle chips, don't worry about your dips. No matter how thick they are, these chips will hold together through all your scooping.

A Little More Spice

It just wouldn't be the holidays without a little something from my pal Annie DuBois of TexMexToGo.com. This year, she's cooked up something that I've been shaking on everything from fajitas to pork chops to popcorn to scrambled eggs: Jalapeño Salt.

If you've tried other "hot salt" products on the market and found them either overseasoned or just too palate-punishingly hot, Jalapeño Salt is going to delight you. The heat is there, no mistake, but balanced in such a way that it adds to the flavor of whatever it's used on rather than bludgeoning it into submission. It's been a lifesaver as a popcorn topping, since I'm trying to be good and eat the low-fat "light" butter microwave popcorn lately. A few shakes of this stuff into the bag and I find my happy place in a hurry.

So there you have it, another menu of gustatory greatness that will make your holiday gifts the ones people want to open first!

Oh, and in case you're wondering what I'm giving this year? If you're on my gift list, buy some good vanilla ice cream. You'll want it to serve atop Paulette Mitchell's Triple-Chocolate Cassis Brownies.

A Blessed Yule, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Wicked-Nifty Festivus, Joyous Kwanzaa and very Happy New Year to all!