Chocolate Trees for Christmas, a King's Tipple and More To Shop: Rustic Tableware With Italian Charm Donna Lennard, an owner of the Il Buco restaurants, has added a shop for artisanal tableware and cooking utensils, mostly Italian imports. You'll find sturdy mortars in black or rose marble; Tuscan glasses, carafes and pitchers; and wooden boards and bowls displayed artfully on rustic tables and cupboards in the showroom: Il Buco Vita, 51 Bond Street (Bowery), ilbucovita.com. To Read: Survivors and Friends in the Kitchen Women for Women International was founded 20 years ago to help women in eight war-torn countries rebuild their lives. The group has produced a stunning cookbook as a fund-raiser that features first-person accounts and exotic recipes from some of the women. Other recipes were contributed by chefs and others involved in humanitarian efforts like Meryl Streep, Christiane Amanpour, Desmond Tutu, Jamie Oliver and René Redzepi. Some are quite complex and well spiced, while others, like Emma Thompson's tempting sausage and cabbage casserole, are "ridiculously easy," as she puts it. "Share: The Cookbook That Celebrates Our Common Humanity," by Women for Women International (Kyle Books, $40). To Butter: French Baguettes Among the Rye Since buying Orwasher's in 2007, Keith Cohen has broadened the scope of this nearly 100-year-old Upper East Side bakery best known for hefty Eastern European loaves like rye and pumpernickel. Now he has introduced French baguettes. He spent two years studying how to make them, including working at Retrodor, a fifth-generation flour mill in France. His handsome baguettes, made from Retrodor's imported flour, have crisp, well-burnished crusts enclosing nicely porous, chewy interiors that demand good butter. They are delivered around noon daily from their bakery in the Bronx and by evening they are often sold out: $3.50 each at Orwasher's Bakery, 308 East 78th Street, 212-288-6569, orwashers.com. To Display: A Tree That's Hard To Resist Zoë Tsoukatos's chocolate Christmas trees are too attractive to eat and too delicious to resist. Made of caramelized almonds dipped in dark chocolate and dusted with confectioners" sugar, the trees come in several sizes including a 10-pounder that's almost two feet tall: $22 to $250 from zoeschocolate.com. To Pour: A Bracer For When the Cold Kicks In King Edward VII was quite the tippler, and his doctor reportedly prescribed this ginger liqueur as a warmer after winter morning rides in his Daimler. It was formulated by Berry Brothers & Rudd in 1903 and you can now add it to your bar to give a royal kick or a touch of Far Eastern zing to cocktails, especially those with a whiskey base. Not very sweet, it has lingering heat from the main ingredient and 18 percent alcohol. It's useful in cooking, too: The King's Ginger liqueur is $37.99 for 750 milliliters at astorwines.com. To Cook: An Amazon Fish Now Sweetens Local Dishes Paiche, a gigantic freshwater fish from the Amazon, has a mild, sweet flavor and a meaty, dense texture that is suitable for sautéing, roasting and grilling; it also holds up well in stews. The fish, which can grow to six feet in length, is threatened by overfishing and deforestation, but it is being raised sustainably in ponds in Peru monitored by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. It has been on some restaurant menus and is now available for home cooks, filleted, shipped frozen from Peru and thawed in the market: $12.99 a pound at Whole Foods Markets. To Use: Serving Wine With a Curve When I first picked up one of the elegantly curvaceous wineglasses at Villard Michel Richard in the New York Palace hotel, I wondered how useful they might be, with their generous bowls tapering to a relatively small opening. But they turn out to be as effective as they are beautiful. The stemware is handblown in Slovakia by Rona Glassware from a thin, lead-free crystalline material that resists breakage and can go into the dishwasher: Rona Sensual glassware made for Steelite International, $40.75 for 24-ounce size, $47.45 for 31-ounce size at tabletopstyle.com. To Give: Another Way to Have Your Beer Some Santa might drop jars of these shimmering jewel-like beer jellies into a suds lover's stocking. There are three. The amber ale has delicate overtones of hops; raspberry wheat is sweet; and dark porter, my favorite, is excellent alongside a slab of aged Gouda: Beer Belly Jellies are $9 each, $25 for three in a tidy crate, at S.O.S. Chefs, 104 Avenue B (East Sixth Street), 212-505-5813, sos-chefs.com.