The Home Chef’s Gift Guide

It doesn’t matter whether the home chef in your life is your spouse, your parent, your sibling, or your friend; chances are good you know someone who enjoys spending time in the kitchen, making sure everyone is comfortable and well-fed. With the help of our Home Chef’s Gift Guide, you’ll find a variety of quality kitchen wares that will make awesome gifts. Best of all, HeltonTool is an authorized distributor of all these fine home products, so you get the full manufacturer’s warranty in addition to our wonderfully low prices.

Chicago Cutlery Knives & Knife Sets

Chicago Cutlery Insignia Steel 18-Piece Knife Set

Chicago Cutlery is renowned for their commitment to quality cutting. Their knives feature exclusive Taper Grind edge technology that ensures a sharper knife and a cleaner cut. If the edge ever does seem to dull, some of our knife sets feature an in-block sharpener to re-hone blades and make them sharp as new again. The knives have an excellent hand-feel, weighing in with just the right balance of a light, manageable design and solid, high-quality construction. With several knives and knife sets to choose from, the home chef you know will have a blade for every task.

Corningware Cookware Sets

Corningware StoveTop 4-piece Pyroceram Blue Cornflower Casserole Set

No matter what dishes she does best, the home chef in your life will appreciate a set of Corningware Pyroceram Stovetop cookware. Available in either the just white design or featuring the blue cornflower embellishment, these dishes look timelessly beautiful in any kitchen. These dishes are made from a material that was pioneered during the burgeoning space exploration era. Pyroceram is virtually impervious to temperature extremes, so there’s no recipe too hot for this bakeware.

Pyrex Glassware & Lids

Pyrex 6-piece Mixing Bowl Set

From everyday Pyrex mixing bowls to some of their more decorative storage dishes, we have glassware that is sure to dazzle the home chef you know. We also have a multitude of colored lids to fit any dish we sell. Pyrex products are proudly made in the USA from materials that don’t hold on to food odors, flavors, or stains, so your home chef will be able to enjoy this iconic glassware for years to come.

Snapware Storage Solutions

Snapware Airtight 26-Piece Storage Container Set

Reliable storage containers with matching lids seem to be something of which no home chef can ever have enough. With our 2-pack of Snapware Airtight 26-piece sets, they just may get enough! This set not only features a variety of perfectly-sized containers with matching lids, but the largest container doubles as a carrying tote. The containers and lids feature a convenient nesting design, so they won’t clutter up valuable kitchen space. Having a cupboard spilling with mismatched containers and lids is almost worse than having no containers at all.

5 Curious Holiday Traditions from Around the World

Traditions are the little repeated acts that help unify a family, a community, or a country. Many of us think of things like starting an Advent calendar, dropping anonymous gifts on doorsteps, or leaving cookies out for Santa Claus. While all these traditions are well and good, we’ve compiled a short list of 5 holiday traditions from around the world that may strike many people as odd.

Japan

via KFC

Many, many Japanese people dine at KFC on Christmas Eve. So many, in fact, that some people advance order their meals as early as October! To make the holiday dining experience even more festive, some locations offer chocolate cakes and sparkling wine along with the original 8-piece bucket. This crispy-fried tradition was born when a 1974 ad campaign titled “Kentucky for Christmas” suggested KFC’s fried chicken makes the ideal holiday meal. This tradition is made even more fascinating when we consider that the vast majority of Japanese people don’t celebrate Christmas. Talk about the power of good advertising!

Greece

While the 12 Days of Christmas in America are an opportunity for gift giving, pre-holiday sales, and other exciting lead-ins to Christmas, they take on a much more frightful tone in Greece.

According to Greek folklore, the kallikantzaros emerges from its underground lair and is able to walk the earth during the 12 Days of Christmas (Dec. 25 – Jan. 5). This nocturnal, goblin-like creature wreaks havoc wherever it goes, so Greek people have a variety of means to deter it. One method is to leave a colander on the porch at night, because the kallikantzaros won’t be able to count all the holes before the sun comes up and it must hide again.

Latvia

via Pinterest

During Ziemassvētki, or Christmas in Latvia, a variety of pagan, religious, and modern traditions culminate in one unique holiday celebration. The strangest, perhaps, is the tradition of mummers. Mummers are people dressed as animals and other more macabre creatures—like the living dead—who travel from door to door offering blessings, encouraging fertility, and scaring away evil spirits. Residents of the home must give treats to the mummers in order for their blessings to take effect.

Guatemala

The tradition of La Quema del Diablo, or “the Burning of the Devil” is uniquely Guatemalan. Since it is believed evil spirits lurk in the dark, dirty corners of the home, the people of Guatemala spend the first week of December sweeping and deep-cleaning. The debris is piled outside the home and topped with an effigy of the devil. On December 7, everyone lights their piles at the same time, sending the devil and his minions away so the people may enjoy the Feast of the Immaculate Conception the following day.

United States

jmehre via Flickr

What began in Philadelphia as 40 people in Santa suits going out for a brew has turned into a national tradition. The Running of the Santas is touted as a charity event officially held in several large cities. Smaller cities and towns across the country conduct their own versions of the tradition, which is ultimately a creative spin on the bar crawl. Featuring live music, games, and of course, copious amounts of booze, the Running of the Santas sends thousands of people dressed as Santa spilling into the streets in the weeks before Christmas.

No matter what traditions you hold dear around the holidays, the important thing is to keep practicing them. The only way for future generations to enjoy these small, repeated acts is for us to keep repeating them. It’s never too late to start a new tradition, either! If any of these traditions (or any of the other 30 listed here) strike your fancy, your only challenge will be convincing your family or friends to join in.

3 Tips for Keeping Up a Cut Tree

There are few Christmas traditions more exciting than going out and selecting the ideal tree for your home. Christmas cheer can be found in everything from the scent of pine in the air to the contagious excitement of fellow tree-shoppers. While it is sometimes a challenge to get the tree wrapped and strapped to the car, there’s no feeling like watching the boughs unfurl in the hopes of being adorned with lights and baubles. Because it is such an iconic element of the holiday season, it’s important to keep your freshly-cut tree looking as good all month as it did when you spotted it in the tree stand. We’ve compiled the 3 best tips for keeping up with your cut tree this year.

1. Water, water, water. The National Christmas Tree Association advises tree stands that provide 1 quart of water for every inch of the tree’s trunk diameter. If you have a 4” tree, your stand should be able to hold a gallon of water at a time. Most importantly, you should maintain that water level the best you can. This is the single best way to keep your tree hydrated.

Some of the worst things you can do to your freshly-cut tree are to drill a hole in the base of the tree or chip away at the bark before putting the tree in the stand. Both practices are detrimental to your tree and neither will improve its water uptake. Instead, cut a level, 1/2″ disc off the base of the trunk before inserting the tree in the stand. Exposing the fresh wood in this fashion is the only measure that will improve water uptake.

2. Avoid heat. While the temperature of water you use to fill your tree stand does not matter, the temperature of the room does! Warmer rooms will speed the drying process and result in you having to fill the tree stand more frequently. While we’re not recommending you cut the heat altogether, room temperature is something to be mindful of. Make sure your tree isn’t positioned too near major sources of heat, like a fireplace, heater vents, or direct sunlight. When selecting lights for your tree, be sure to choose low heat options, such as miniature lights. These small, low-heat lights will be less drying than larger, hotter options.

3. Be safe. As inviting as it is to head to bed while the tree keeps glowing in the front window, avoid leaving the lights on when you go to bed or leave the house. Not only will this practice save on electrical costs, it also reduces the risk of drying your tree with lights no one is awake or around to appreciate. Make sure you don’t overload electrical outlets near the tree, and be sure the lights you use are in excellent condition. Also, monitor the tree for freshness throughout the season; if it ever appears dry or if the needles begin dropping, consider replacing the tree or removing it altogether. Inconvenient though it may be to remove and replace all the trappings, having a dry tree in the home is a major fire hazard.

In addition to being beautiful and smelling great, freshly-cut trees are biodegradable and can be used for a variety of other purposes once they’ve left your living room. For these reasons, make sure you recycle (rather than burn) your tree when you’re finished enjoying it.

If you need somewhere safe to keep your ornaments after you’ve removed them from the tree, consider one of our convenient and high-quality ornament keepers.

The Story Behind the Christmas Cookie

The first day of December brings with it a variety of seasonal favorites. Houses along the street shimmer with newly-hanged lights, radio stations begin their 24-hour seasonal soundtracks, and people all over the country scour the internet for delicious and different Christmas cookie recipes. While we have found a couple unique cookie lists that we’ll share with you in a minute, we thought it would be fun to first share a little history of the Christmas cookie.

There’s some debate about whether the story begins by accident or on purpose, so we’ll present both theories and let you be the judge. Some historians believe cookies were the likely result of early (we’re talking Neolithic Era) humans spilling grain paste on the rocks around a cooking fire. Talk about a happy accident. Others believe cookies originated as small, tester cakes, put into a hot oven to determine if it was the correct temperature to bake a full-sized cake.

No matter the original origin story, there’s no debate that sweet baked goods have been found at winter solstice festivals and celebrations for thousands of years, predating the holiday we know as Christmas. As with many modern holidays, Christmas formed as a convenient melding of pagan and Christian traditions that occurred around the same time of year. People naturally acknowledged the arrival of winter with the killing of animals that would be a burden on the grain supply through the famine of winter. With an abundance of fresh meat and the flowing of mead that had been set to ferment in the spring, the only thing missing from the party was dessert!

The traditional flavors of Christmas cookies are spicy, nutty, and fruity. These types of ingredients were used in the Middle Ages when cooks prepared celebratory cakes of cinnamon, ginger, pepper, almonds, and dried fruit. It wasn’t until lebkuchen, or gingerbread, made its way from Germany to Queen Elizabeth I that the Christmas cookie began to take shape. At this point in time, Christmas had already eclipsed the solstice as the most popular winter celebration, so it was no surprise when Elizabeth I wished to honor her courtiers with the gift of having her cooks fashion ginger cookies in their likeness. This is how gingerbread men became a Christmas staple.

Soon recipes for cookies were cropping up in cookbooks all over Europe. The Dutch brought the tradition of Christmas cookies with them to America in the early 1600s. While most recipes from the sixteen and seventeen hundreds produce rudimentary, super-crunchy biscuits sprinkled with savory spices, Americans gave them delightfully whimsical names, like plunkets, jumbles, and cry-babies. The recipes for these crunchy confections often warn bakers that the cookies are best enjoyed up to a week after baking, only after the humidity of a cellar has made them more palatable.

It wasn’t until cookie cutters were imported from Germany in the late 1800s that people were able to create cookies in elaborate shapes. The cutters were originally intended to make Christmas ornaments using inedible dough. However, it didn’t take long for people to start pressing them into cookie dough, and the cut-out cookie was formed.

Just as the origin of cookies has more than one possible story, the tradition of putting out cookies for Santa also has more than one starting point. Norse tradition has had people putting out food for Odin’s eight-legged horse, Sleipner, for thousands of years. Some believe the act of leaving cookies for St. Nick is in homage to the generosity of the actual Saint Nicholas, who spent his life helping people and feeding children in need. Still others state that the tradition gained traction during the Great Depression in the United States, when parents sought to teach children the importance of showing gratitude for their gifts, no matter how simple or small.

Christmas cookie swaps have origins dating as far back as WWI, but historians believe the swaps mentioned in literature from that time were more like bake sales today. The true holiday cookie exchange is often attributed to the Erwin Group, a division of the Syracuse Home Bureau, dating back to Syracuse, New York in 1936. If you plan on mixing up your own batch of dough and participating in one of these iconic Christmas cookie traditions, consider bringing your treats in one of our cookie carriers, so they’ll stay safe and presentable on the way. If you’re making bars, we have the perfect bake-and-take solution.

Whether you get together with friends to trade recipes and share humorous stories of your baking mishaps, or if you low-key leave a plate of Oreos for Santa on Christmas Eve, there’s no denying Christmas cookies have become a tasty staple of the holiday season.

To see cookies inspired by (almost) every state in America, click here.

To see a holiday Cookie Calendar featuring 25 unique recipes, click here.

A Helping Hand for Holiday Decorating

Do you hear that? The Christmas music is starting to play. It’s only a matter of time before the snow is flying, the cookies and cocoa are being passed around the hearth, and the streets are twinkling with lights. Whether you’re feeling like a bit of a Scrooge this year or if you’re ready to don your gay apparel and sing like Buddy the Elf, decorating your home for the holidays is one of the most effective ways to get into the spirit of the season.

The Lights

Longwood Gardens

Many of us have memories (both real-life and supplied by campy holiday comedies) of the family patriarch standing on a snowy roof, stapling his glove between the string of lights and the shingles. If anyone you know is still using a staple gun, it’s time to inform him there’s a better alternative. In fact, with adhesive light clips, the only hardware you’ll need to hang your lights is a ladder. Whether you plan to hang LED or incandescent, icicle style or great big bulbs, Christmas Lights Etc. has compiled a convenient chart of what clips work best with what lights in which location on your home.

The Tree

Some people love the natural scent of pine that fills their home with the arrival of a live or freshly cut tree. Other people prefer the convenience and cleanliness of a pre-lighted plastic tree. Since most artificial trees come with everything you need to know on the packaging, we got some tips from About.com on which cut trees work best for decorating and how to make sure your tree fits in the space you have designated for it.

Ornaments

Godfather Style

When it comes to ornaments, people have a variety of different ideas of what configuration looks best. Some families opt for a hodgepodge of handmade ornaments bursting with sentimentality. Others stick to a strict theme of beauty and elegance year after year. No matter what type of ornaments you have, you’ll need to keep them safe before and after their brief stint among the boughs. Our Snapware ornament keepers are the perfect solution. Capable of holding 27-48 ornaments, our 3-tiered keeper is a fantastic choice for safely stowing all your valuable glass.

If you aren’t settled on what kind of ornaments you’ll hang this year, check out this list compiled by BuzzFeed. It contains 39 different ways to decorate bare glass ornament bulbs. Consider laying down masking paper before you get started for easy clean-up, then let your imagination run wild with festive creativity!

Stockings

Design Mom

While these sweets-filled Santa socks have traditionally been hung by the chimney (with care), many homes no longer contain fireplaces nor mantles. Babble offers a list of 10 Festive Ways to Hang Christmas Stockings on their blog. Take a peek at what alternatives they suggest instead of using wall-damaging nails or the sometimes-unreliable weighted stocking hangers we see this time of year.

Holiday Deals from HeltonTool

Whatever style you choose to decorate your home for the holidays, we hope you are able to do it safely and affordably. The new Holiday Deals section on our website offers more tools and housewares that will make your holiday prep a little easier, so you can sit back and delight in the twinkling lights, the scent of frosted pine, and the assurance that Santa will be here soon.