Today… How do you handle the challenge of choosing a suitable Hostess Gift these days? The Hostess with the Mostest (time in the klink) has a really creative idea that seems right in tune with today’s food and drink reality. And you give them by the dozen!
Yep… It’s eggs. But not just any eggs. And it’s their exclusivity (scarcity), not how much they cost, that will impress your hostess when she loosens the bow and pulls back the giftwrap…
Now, that’s creative!
Talk about a truly tuned-in foodie!
Entertaining maven Martha Stewart is proposing a perfect-all-round solution to the eternal problem of finding the ideal hostess gift.
Flowers are considered passé, I’m ad-vised. Though they’re still de rigueur if your hostess is a good friend or relative, or someone else really special to you.
Now-a-days, most folks invited to a dinner party usually default to a bottle of half-decent wine as a hostess gift.
The problem, Stewart argues in a recent article, is that wine has become boring and predictable. And folks have started to cheap-out on it, showing up with bottles that cost under $10, and show it. There arose a few years back, post-millennium fascination with wine. And there’s now a growing chance that your host or hostess will know enough to catch you out.
“What’s new, Martha?”
What’s new, and really exciting is… Switching up your next hostess gift to the aforementioned edible will not only occasion genuine appreciation from the recipient. It also has the potential to start some really good dinner-time conversations.
Martha cheats…
But in a good way. Remember the 1995 hit movie The American President? In which Michael Douglas plays a widowed US president running for re-election, and Annette Benning plays a high-powered Capitol Hill lobbyist who falls for him. A secondary plot line that runs right through the 2 hour fea-ture is that the Pres tries to buy her flowers, but fails time after time. In the final moments of the film – he succeeds. “How did you do it?” she asks. “I just remembered,” smiles the wiley chief exec. “I’ve got a Rose Garden!”
Well… Martha has a farm! It’s 150 prime acres in Bedford, New York. And it’s a working far, too, with extensive gardens, a greenhouse, and almost a commercial-sized flock of laying hens. (See photo, above, left.)
“It is such an opportune time to have your own chickens.” She confides. “I have 200 chickens. They take a little bit of a rest during the winter. Not everybody stops laying, but they slow down.”
Nevertheless… “The eggs are coming 50 a day, something like that. And so everybody has fresh eggs that works on the farm. My daughter and her kids get fresh eggs. It’s great to have them.”
Okay for her you say… But what about the rest of us?
Still a viable proposition
Stand back and consider the situation… Even if eggs are hard to find and even harder to afford, you can probably procure a dozen or two for around $1o – $12. The current average retail price of eggs in the US northeast, where the industry is less affected by the avian flu crisis, is around $5.99 a dozen. Compare that to $25 or more a bottle for a wine you can count on to pass muster as a ‘thoughtful’ gift. And eggs really aren’t so hard to find, especially if you’re okay with paying a little more for or-ganic and/or cage free ones. Yes, they cost a little more. But your hostess will notice, and she’ll be all-the-more impressed with you!
My take
I’ll admit, I would probably never, left to my own devices, have taken to thinking far enough outside the box to hit independently on the idea of giving eggs as a Hostess Gift. But I’m glad Martha did.
My questions to you:
How would you react if someone you love brought you eggs as a Host/Hostess Gift?
Are you, like my dear old friend, Ray, the kind of host who counts on guests bringing a bottle of wine so there will be something to occupy the crowd until it’s time to sit down to table?
Would you be willing to risk making a huge faux pas by gifting eggs to s household where someone, unbeknownst to you, has an egg allergy?
Would you be afraid – especially if it’s a small, intimate affair, that your hostess might misunderstand your egg gift as an indication that you expect to still be at her house for breakfast the next morning?
Muse on that!
~ Maggie J.