What cool cooking gadgets/equipment did you get for Christmas?

On with the parade...

A Royal Coffee Maker Balance vacuum coffee brewer, in "modern copper."

The coffee maker came early, but for one reason or another didn't get used until Christmas eve.  It is, in a word, fantastic!  Not only beautiful on the shelf, it's fun to use, fun to watch, and makes truly excellent coffee.

Just looking at it, you KNOW it needs presents of its own, so I bought a Kitchen Aid Pro Line coffee grinder, because they were good looking and had lots of good reviews on Coffee Geek.  But when I asked around at Home Barista, everyone slammed them.  So, I did some serious research and ended up deciding on a Breville Smart for the Royal and for French press.  Returning the Kitchen Aid and exchanging it for the Breville was very complicated, only partly because everyone was out of stock on the Breville.  They retail at the same price, the Breville isn't discounted anywhere, difficult to get a hold of, but oddly, after a lot of running and calling around just trying to make it happen, I ended up making about fifty bucks on the deal. 

The new Breville grinder is for press pot and vacuum maker only.  Our "old" La Cimbali still purrs happily, but is too much of a PITA to adjust for the coarser grinds and is reserved for espresso only. 

A Le Creuset large, low-sided brasier in cassis, for Linda.

And an Emile Henry round stewpot in Figue, also for Linda. 

Yes, they call the color Figue, capital "F" and all.  Linda loves it, but the name makes me wish for a more extensive command of French profanity.  Still the English, "I've got your Figue" isn't bad if offered with an appropriate gesture.

Santa took Linda to Sur La Table on the Tuesday after Christmas with the idea of buying her the casserole.  Somehow other gifts reached the checkout counter and Santa graciously got those too.  While we were there, Linda condescended to give Santa a hand and replaced my "Eileen" French press which I thought was in the garage, but according to Santa and Linda apparently not.

Santa was obviously really, really nice to me this year.  I especially love all our coffee gifts.  Thank you, Santa.

There's a sort of backstory here.  We didn't have any money to speak of for years, and for all that time Linda sold her hair to give me a watch fob while I pawned my watch to buy her a comb.  However, things changed for the very much better, and the pent up demand made us go overboard in a big way.  My grand daughter, the talented and lovely Ellie; and my children, son Max, daughter Lily, and Max's fiancee and my new daughter Nicole, were showered because we'd had to be so modest in the past.  There was a lot of pent up demand around here too, so Linda and I were able to indulge one another shamelessly.

For me, the high point of all the Christmas shopping was Linda in Toys R Us able to shop for Ellie's gifts without the need to put anything back on the shelf because it was too expensive.  That Friday before Christmas, I made two little girls happy -- one of whom had waited a lifetime.  You just can't beat that.

I don't mean to go all hardcase in Nicko's thread, but may I remind you that, Without pictures it didn't happen.

BDL