What To Get Everyone *Else* In Your Life
A holiday gift-giving guide tailored to every need you have
It’s holiday shopping season, folks.
If all the other emails in your inbox hadn’t tipped you off yet, well, I’m here to tell you that Christmas is coming soon. We’ve just gone through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and we’re accelerating fast toward the end of the year.
You’re probably already seeing a host of gift-giving guide popping up with helpful ideas of what you should buy for each person in your life, whether they’re The Outdoor Enthusiast Mom or The Dad Who Likes To Grill or the Artsy 8-Year-Old.
There’s a lot of good ideas to be found in these guides! Problem is, they’re often far too broad, too tailored to generic archetypes of gift recipients that invariably leave out a lot of people who don’t fit as neatly into these categories.
That’s where I come in.
You see, The Action Cookbook Newsletter isn’t Big Media; it’s Boutique Media, here to cater to you and your very-specific interests and needs.
I've prepared a gift guide for the other people in your life, the ones those gift guides often miss.
Let’s take a look, why don’t we?
The mafia underboss who took you under his wing and treated you like the son he never had, not knowing that you’ve been an undercover cop the whole time
Billy the Bullet had a reputation. He was known as the kind of man who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet or twenty in anyone who he thought had wronged him, and it was a reputation he’d earned by doing exactly that. You were brought in to infiltrate his crew—a fresh-faced young state trooper with a manufactured rap sheet, a would-be tough who’d bring down The Bullet’s empire from the inside.
You expected to see horrible things, and to have do horrible things yourself.
What you didn’t expect was how The Bullet would take you under his wing, looking after you and treating you like the father you’d never known.
You know he’s a criminal—one of the most savage, brutal criminals this town has ever known—but you’ve started to wonder what you are now. You’ve started to wonder if you’ve gone too deep undercover—or if maybe you’re not undercover at all, and this is who you actually are.
Gift Idea:
Billy’s a man who works with his hands, whether it’s cracking skulls or unloading crates of illegal firearms. And those hands can get dry and chapped in the brutal cold of the dockside winters. So why not get him some Working Hands Hand Cream from O’Keeffe’s? He’d never buy it for himself, but he’ll be sure to thank you for it.
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The man who stole your father’s fortune
He was once your father’s business partner. He was once your father’s best friend.
Giancalmo and your father had grown up together, hungry young lads without a single coin between them. They had big dreams, though. Dreams of making their fortune together. Without a vision, though, dreams are just that—dreams. Giancalmo? He was just a dreamer. But your father had vision. He’d had an idea—one that would make them both rich, and improve the lives of everyone in the town. He once believed in things like that—improving the lives of others, a rising tide lifts all boats and so forth.
This was all long before you were born, of course.
You knew only the broken man, the man who cursed under his breath every time Giancalmo’s luxurious, gold-leafed carriages rattled down your dusty street on their way up to his grand manor on the hill. The man who died penniless and far too young, driven to his grave by the heartbreak of having his fortune stolen from him.
You left town. The shame that had accumulated on your father’s name was too heavy a burden for you to carry. You traveled across the sea, far away from this town. You made your own fortune in the spice trade, and now—decades later—you’ve returned to your father’s village with a new name, a new identity. You’re a debonair count from a far-off land, and you’ve quickly become the talk of the town, so much so that a letter came down from Giancalmo’s manor, inviting you to his famed Winter Ball.
It’s there that you plan to kill him.
Gift Idea:
Obviously, your plan is to offer Giancalmo—noted far and wide for his voracious appetite for the grape—a rare and prized bottle of wine you procured on your travels across the far seas, one you have poisoned with the same poison you’ve spent years building up a tolerance to, so he won’t suspect a thing when you drink from it first.
But you want the wine to breathe first, so why not also get him this artistic wine decanter? It’ll look great for years to come once you take over the manor.
The ghost who haunts your art studio
You couldn’t believe your good luck when the broker showed you the space. It was a full floor, the depth of a city block. It had high ceilings, exposed brick, and tons of light pouring through the tall windows at the front, the ones that offered a view of the waterfront. It was a space far nicer than you should have been able to afford on a starving artist’s meager earnings, but it was being offered up for a steal.
You signed on the line before even leaving that day.
The next day, you set up your easels and began to paint, but something felt strange. You couldn’t explain it, but the energy in the space was… unusual. At times, you’d feel an odd chill blow through you, even on the most sweltering of summer days.
One morning, you arrived at the studio to find a completed painting on a canvas that had been blank the night before. It was stunning in its competence, style and detail, like the work of an Old Master. The painting depicted a blushing young girl, hand-in-hand with a handsome young man, walking down the same street on which the studio’s building still stands. You assumed a rival artist was playing a strange prank on you, and made sure to lock the studio up tight when you left that night, annoyed.
The next day, a new painting had appeared. This one showed a scene down at the waterfront; the same young man as before is shown boarding a steamer in full military uniform. The girl is there again, too, in her finest Sunday dress, looking at once deeply in love and utterly bereft. You grew angry at whoever was playing this game with you, but were nonetheless taken by the beauty of the art.
On the third day, a new painting has appeared.
It is a quiet, dark scene; the girl reads a telegram by candlelight, as she sobs in the dark. The tears on her face are tiny, but so brilliantly rendered that you feel compelled to touch the canvas to see if it’s actually wet. You have come to accept that this is not a prank, but something far more strange. You’re still too terrified to spend a night in the studio to find out the truth, but you begin leaving out fresh canvases and fresh paint each night.
One day, an art dealer passes through the studio. They’re unimpressed with your own work, as they always have been, but they spot one of the mysterious paintings and are smitten with it, buying it from you on the spot. Collectors catch word, and soon you’re the talk of the town.
The works grow more ominous, though. The girl grows older, and colder; the streets darker and lonelier. Her once-fine clothing turns to rags. One day, you find a painting of her toiling in a sweatshop, her face a mask of resignation. The next day, a painting shows that same shop engulfed in flames. You recognize the burning space as the same one in which you now sit, the most celebrated artist in the city.
You stay late that night.
And that’s when you see her, floating toward you.
Gift Idea:
You already know that she’s an artistic type, but it also seems like she’s working through some stuff. Maybe she’d like this Therapy Dough, modeled after the clay used by art therapists and infused with calming essential oils!
The Guardian of The Bridge
All across the land, they speak of a magic forest. They say it is a place where all of your questions can be answered. A place where you will find the truth behind the questions you did not even know to ask.
The only way to reach the forest, however, is to cross The Bridge.
The only way across The Bridge is to answer the riddle posed by Glorøm, the Guardian.
How can four be half of five?, he asks?
He will ask you the riddle once. Once you have answered, he will bid you to cross, but he will not tell you if you have solved the riddle. You only find that out in the middle, when it will be too late to turn back.
The bones littering the chasm below attest to the riddle’s difficulty.
Gift Idea:
It’s cold out there by The Bridge, what with the winds whipping up from the chasm of despair below. I bet Glorøm would love keeping his drink warm all day in a YETI mug.
The hard-boiled private investigator who was only trying to make a buck like anyone else and didn’t ask for this kind of trouble, you hear
Name’s Hank. Hank Henry. So nice, they named me twice, right? That’s what they say, but I ain’t never been nice and sure as heck not twice. I only took on your case because you seemed like such a sad-faced dame. Missing husband, huh? I’ve seen it a hundred times, and ninety-nine of them he’s known exactly where he is.
I guess we all go missing sooner or later, though, don’t we?
Anyways, I signed on to help find you your Tom, Dick or Harry, but I didn’t sign up for this kind of trouble. This city’s rotting from the inside, you see, and I don’t want to be too deep in it when it collapses. There’s bodies buried under City Hall and the last thing I need is to go diggin’ myself a grave next to them.
So why don’t you get on out of my office, you hear? Find yourself a new husband, and forget you ever sent me lookin’ down the wrong alleys.
Gift Idea:
The nights are dark in this corrupt city, and they’re getting darker every year. I bet Hank could really use one of these lightweight LED headlamps from NightBuddy!
The bartender at that roadside bar that only appears on the darkest moonless night of the year
It was a cold and windy night when you stopped into the bar, in need of warming up. A wreck on the main road had snarled traffic for hours, and your clever idea to take a detour had left you lost on a lonely, dark road, without even a sliver of moon to guide you. When you saw the light coming from this cozy little bar, you pulled right in.
It was empty, save for the kind-faced man behind the bar.
My name’s Willie, he said. Why don’t you pull up a stool and have a drink?
There was something about him, something that made you sit. Something that made you want to spill out your problems to this stranger over a whiskey or two. He offered a word or two of advice, but he mostly listened, and that was what you needed.
At the end of the night, you went to settle up and realized you’d left your wallet at the office. You apologized profusely, but Willie wasn’t having it. You swore you’d swing by tomorrow with the money, but he said it was “on the house”.
Somehow, you made it home.
The next morning, with daylight on your side and your wallet collected from the office, you drove back down that same back road, but couldn’t seem to find the bar at all. You drove up and down the road three times, convinced you’d lost your mind, but it was nowhere to be found. You took the same road home for months, hoping something would change, but it never did.
That is, until a full year later, on a night as cold and moonless as the first. You drove by, and there it was again. You walked in, and Willie smiled.
Why don’t you pull up a stool and have a drink?
Gift Idea:
Willie’s no expert mixologist—he’s from an era of plain talk and straight whiskey—but that doesn’t mean you can’t up his cocktail game with this clever cocktail-ice mold from ClearlyFrozen, which produce a whole batch of crystal-clear 2” ice cubes in only 24 hours.
Derek (from work)
Oh, yeah, Derek.
Gift Idea:
I dunno, like, whiskey stones shaped like golf balls?
He looks like he’d like that.
Of course, a great gift idea for anyone on your list is a subscription to The Action Cookbook Newsletter! That’s the gift that keeps on givin’ the whole year.
The Other One
You were too stunned to react the first time you saw them walking down the street.
They were your exact double in every way. They were even dressed exactly the same as you were at that moment, but no one else on the street seemed to notice. You stood stock-still, mouth agape, frozen in place as they walked past you and out of sight.
The next time you saw them, you were ready.
You spotted them from a block away—again, dressed exactly the same as you. You sprinted to chase them without a clue of what you’d do or say if you caught them, but desperate to do so nonetheless. Just as you were about to catch up, they rounded a corner, and by the time you had, they were gone.
You began seeing them all over town, always just out of reach. Every time, they mirrored your appearance. Even as you took pains to change the way you looked, they were always there, exactly the same. Did you have an exact doppleganger, one who somehow knew exactly what you were going to do and wear each day? It didn’t seem possible. You began to wonder if you were losing your mind.
Were they an illusion?
Or were you the illusion?
Gift Idea:
I bet they’d like one of those outdoor pizza ovens. I’ve been eyeing those myself.
That, or Taylor Swift tickets. Everybody wants those.
—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)
rookie mistake: a lot of poisons separate out into the gas phase when you run them through a decanter, wasting all that effort building up tolerance to a poison that isn't there anymore. I'd recommend pouring Giancalmo's and your glass of wine directly to maximize potency. AND THEN use the decanter on a nice bottle of wine while celebrating at his funeral.
I love that the links all work.
And I'm interested in the decanter- is it good for Amontillado?