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Food for Thought Friday: try giving experiences > gifts 🤗 (+ some ideas)
 

Hello!

I hope you had a wonderful feast yesterday! (Or if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving then I hope you had a fabulous Thursday!)

As you've probably scrolled through a bunch of "DEAL" emails before deciding to read mine (honored!), this year I'd like to pitch you on the idea of giving experiences rather than physical gifts. This can apply at holiday times like now (for many of us), or really any time of year! In fact, I have traditions with a few friends of planning "birthday dates" for each other on our birthdays and it is SO FUN.

But anyways... let me tell you a story about last year's small Christmas with my immediate family (my parents, 3 younger brothers and me). We did not coordinate this at all, but THREE of us gave experience gifts instead of physical gifts, and it was SO SPECIAL! Here's what we did:

  1. My family loves oysters, and my youngest brother Anthony surprised us all by ordering A LOT of oysters and shucking them for us for a pre-Christmas family oyster dinner at home on December 23 (shells pictured above). It was super fun and memorable, so much so that we might even make it a new family tradition!
  2. Maybe because I had been lacking in physical touch in 2020, and since I'm the resident family masseuse, I made little coupons for "Jolly Jessica's Massage Parlor" and gave each of my immediate family members a coupon to schedule a massage while I was home. Everyone loved it, and it was meaningful to me too because physical touch = special connection and I would only give such an intimate gift to a small number of people in the world.
  3. My middle brother Ian had recently spent some time as a barista, so he gave us all a family coffee lesson on December 26, complete with both espresso AND pour over techniques. He made us each an adorable and informative booklet with coffee recipe ratios and instructions to keep on hand, and he bought a few coffee equipment items that we divided among us afterwards according to who needed what. We had a blast, we got to hear about Ian's passion for coffee and all that he had learned, and we all got to taste and evaluate different coffees together. Clearly I'm still thinking about it a year later! And of course I saved my booklet, which he put so much care into:

While I'm sharing examples, here are a few more experience gifts I've received!

  • A shopping trip to the COOL PLANT STORE where my friend treated me to a plant and we had a blast picking out pots and plants together (and then squeezing our large plants into her small car, LOL).
  • Another friend surprised me with a MOUNTAIN BIKING LESSON/ADVENTURE! That was something I would not have signed up for on my own but I absolutely loved being challenged in a new way - it was amazing!
  • Book launch events have also made for some great friend birthday dates; give a book, go hear the author speak together! Physical + experience gifts combined :)

I love the idea of both 1:1 experience gifts AND group experience gifts. Especially with my family - since the times when we are ALL together can be rare these days, and since our interests sometimes diverge, a shared memorable + creative experience helps us connect in new ways and thus stands out among the memories we make together.

So if you have a special skill - share it with your people in the form of a gift experience! And for those who are faraway - a zoom class (of course) is a really fun way to be together when you're apart! I recently took a couple zoom watercolor classes by a little SF shop called Case for Making - anyone can join and they're so fun!

Anddddddddd, I will most definitely be doing more zoom cooking classes in the new year! Another round of  Intuitive Cooking Tonight is pencilled in for Thursday, January 13, 2022. Signups will go live the first week of January and more classes will be scheduled then too. In the meantime, I just added gift cards to my website (woohoo!!!), so you can now gift a Garlic Press Jess class to anyone you love, and/or do a future class together!

And if you have topic requests for upcoming GPJ classes, please do send them my way!

GPJ gift cards here!
More on GPJ zoom classes here.

And, if you want physical gift ideas too, check out my thoughtful gift guide (from 2019 but these are still my favorite things to gift!), as well as my kitchen shop page which has all my favorite kitchen gadgets! (The links are mainly to amazon but I highly encourage you to support small local businesses instead/as much as you can!)

Happy experiencing and gifting!

Love,
Jess

PS. Don't forget those gift cards!
photo of me by Clara Rice
All photos are taken by me and recipes written by me, unless otherwise noted.

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Hi, I'm Jess! I help health-conscious, busy people transform their cooking from chore to lifestyle through intuitive cooking, which I teach through online classes, free content, coaching and more. This is my newsletter, Food for Thought Fridays, where I share highly actionable tips and inspiration to help you cook more intuitively (which makes cooking feel easier and SO much more fun!). Once a month, I share a recipe that's really worth making, and I only share those with my email subscribers. Sometimes the text above may include affiliate links, meaning (at no additional cost to you) I get a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This helps me to continue to share free content, so I would love it if you buy through my link! Thank you for supporting Garlic Press Jess!

    I currently work + live on land that is the unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone. And I can't wait to eat at Cafe Ohlone! Check out this article about them.


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