Christmas Gift Ideas
Stuck for Christmas gift ideas?
Let’s Brunch has the perfect gift for your special brunch lover, or anyone else. Check out our 2009 Brunch gift buying guide for ideas.
Most gifts listed below are available for purchase online, simply follow the links and your Christmas shopping will be a breeze!
Don’t forget to check out earthgreetings.com.au to order some eco-friendly cards and wrapping paper, and you will be ready to settle down with a well deserved bubbly!
Eggs
Love eggs? OO.com.au has an interesting selection of egg poaching equipment, including an elaborate 7 piece stainless steel egg poacher set. None of which have been tested or condoned by Let’s Brunch, but hey, they may make for an interesting Christmas morning. Don’t forget to check out www.tjoos.com.au for any vouchers before purchasing from OO.com.au.
Omelette Maker
Looking for something affordable and multi-functional? How about a $19.95 omelette maker from crazysales.com.au? An omelette is a great way to use up left over Christmas ham, and a completely acceptable meal as dinner or lunch as well as brunch so excellent value for money and multi-purpose!
Looking for something even cheaper?
You cant go past an egg timer for a classic cheesy Christmas gift, but the Burton’s Egg Timer is a nifty twist on the old school egg timer. The Egg-Perfect egg timer is shaped like an egg, and sits in the boiling water with your eggs, and changes colour according to the “done-ness” factor. According to thegoodstore.com.au, this is the first egg timer to be produced in a factory that also produces ET The Extra-Terrestrial night lights with a red glowing tummy!
The egg-perfect egg timer retails for $10 at thegoodstore.com.au
Waffle Maker
Christmas day waffles are a childhood favourite of mine, and anyone young or young at heart would appreciate the gift of a Belgium Waffle maker. The elaborate Sunbeam Belgian waffle maker even allows you to flip the plate 180 degrees for perfect waffles! Check out Bigpond Online Shopping to purchase
Brunch Cookbook
What better way to encourage your special someone to make you brunch in bed, than with a brunch cookbook! Thenile.com.au has an excellent selection of brunch cookbooks available for online purchase, including:
Lazy Brunch by Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy
Russell Hobbs Toaster
If you are looking to really impress someone special this Christmas, you cant go past a limited edition Russell Hobbs Glass and Swarovski limited edition toaster. There were only 1000 of these beauties produced, containing 228 small and 9 large Swarovski crystals. Each comes with its own certificate of authenticity and identification number. Toasters are available to purchase at Harrods.com for a cool £149 (AUD 267), although you may struggle to ship it over this way in time for Christmas
Have we missed something?
Let us know your favourite brunch gift, tacky, cheesy, useful or otherwise by commenting below.
Sumac, Darling Harbour
Last Sunday we enjoyed a four course tasting brunch at Sumac, Darling Harbour, as part of the Sydney International Food Festival. This was definitely something different for even the most travelled brunching enthusiast.
Coffee
Sumac serves Di Lorenzo coffee and we ordered a flat white and a latte which were both fairly good quality, but coffee was not the draw card of the cafe, the food is what this place is all about during SIFF.
Starter
Brunch starter consisted of Cous Cous with nuts (macadamia, almonds) and dried apricots (pictured centre), Porridge with dates (pictured front), rice pudding with poached saffron pear (pictured rear) accompanied by a selection of heated milk, cardamom milk, stewed rhubarb and brown sugar.
The highlight for me would have been the rice pudding with the poached pear as well as the rhubarb stew with the porridge.
Daniel favoured the Cous Cous with nuts and cardamom milk combination.
Mains
The main course consisted of eggs with sides, meaning we got eggs cooked every way, including scrambled, poached and fried on Turkish toast. I took care of the scrambled eggs and Daniel took the poached and I must say the scrambled eggs were of very high quality compared to what you usually receive and they knew what they were doing on the poached egg front as well.
Accompanying the eggs were an amazing assortment of sides which included all of the traditional big breakfast usual suspects such as bacon, mushrooms, homemade baked beans, fried tomatoes, home made hash browns, blanched spinach, merguez sausages as well as some more exotic choices in the form of grilled haloumi cheese. The home made baked beans and hash browns were a nice touch and were both high quality which was great to see.
Another great feature of the main course of the brunch was the addition of a Tajine, we made the choice of the Lamb Tajine (pumpkin and feta was the vegetarian offering). This was accompanied by Turkish and Lebanese bread and included diced onions, capsicum and minced lamb with 2 eggs that were cracked onto the top which ended up being poached from the steam trapped in the tajine while it was being baked.
Desserts/sweets
As if the previous courses weren’t enough, the meal was finished with a raspberry and chocolate (pieces) pancake topped off with butter scotch syrup and chocolate fudge ice cream. We only managed to get through about half of this which wasn’t a bad effort as it was about a centimetre thick.
The last word…
On approaching Samuc from inside the Harbourside mall, I was a bit dubious about how good it was going to be, however once we were inside the Morrocan decor themed interior was a nice place to be with a view out over Darling Harbour. The crockery had an alternating Moroccan pattern to it and the wait staff were friendly and enthusiastic about the special SIFF menu which was great to see.
This special set menu brunch as part of SIFF is only available on Saturday’s and Sundays during October 2009 but it is definitely worth getting out of bed and heading into the city for on either day of the weekend as you won’t be finding an offering like this at many place around Sydney. At $25 a head it is expensive for a brunch and there is a 10% service surcharge on a Sunday but this offering is well worth the money. Make sure you are seriously hungry when you show up as there is a large amount of food put on the table, sometimes there is barely enough table real estate available for all of the dishes the staff bring out for you.
Happy brunching
Gabrielle
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