Alternative Christmas Gifts

Think outside the gift box this Christmas! With the festive season here, we’ve come up with some different ideas for alternative, green and DIY gifts that celebrate the Slow Food philosophy…

A local food hamper
Create a hamper with a selection of honeys, jams, wines, cheeses, fresh produce, desserts or traditional specialties from your local small-scale producers. Try to find endangered products in your area, or include some local Presidia and Ark products, to help promote your region’s food biodiversity. If you don’t know how to find the small producers in your area, just get in touch with your local convivium.

A homemade cosmetics gift box
Create a box of homemade, natural cosmetics, made completely in your own kitchen with almost-completely edible ingredients. To get you started, click for recipes for cocoa and shea butter deodorant, beeswax and coconut oil moisturizer and essential oil insect repellent.

A donation to a Slow Food project
Make a donation in a friend or family member’s name to one of Slow Food’s projects that support small-scale producers around the world, particularly in the global south. You can make a donation at www.slowfood.com/donate

A piece of mother dough
Baking your own bread is one of life’s simple pleasures; using your flour of choice, kneading the dough, waiting while it rises in the oven and then finally savoring its aroma and taste. Follow the recipe here to prepare a mother dough (fermentation starter) and give away pieces of it so your friends can start make their own sourdough bread.

CSA Membership
A present that comes in many different boxes! Sign a friend up to a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme and they will receive a regular delivery of seasonal farm-fresh food, often directly to their door!

A homemade recipe book
Why not put together a collection of your family’s favorite recipes? Create a personalized set by talking to your grandparents, remembering a highlight from your childhood, finding the most-worn out pages in cookbooks or finally going through all those magazine cuttings saved over the years! You could even go a step further and ask around the community to create a selection of traditional recipes from your area.

A Slow Food membership
Connect someone to an international community committed to saving food cultures and biodiversity! The Slow Food membership fee will go towards sustaining Slow Food’s projects around the world, protecting the livelihoods of small-scale producers of quality traditional foods and safeguarding biodiversity. www.slowfood.com/joinus

If you have any ideas for DIY recipes or green living tips, write to us at [email protected] with ‘Slow Living’ in the subject line.